A US national and his Filipino business partner were charged in the central Philippine city of Cebu with the manufacturing and selling of illegally-copied computer software.

No one has ever been convicted of software piracy in the Philippines, where the illicit industry is estimated to have cost vendors 69 million dollars last year in lost revenue.

Kevin Wayne Cunningham, 42, of Washington D.C. and Rommel Ocariza, 25, of Cebu City were both charged with three counts of violating the Intellectual Property Rights Law, law enforcement officials said.

Officers from the National Bureau of Investigation arrested the men on Friday, as they were about to sell pirated Microsoft software valued at about nine million pesos (160,700 dollars).

Source: AFP