Microsoft announced this week it has filed 52 cases against pirate software resellers in countries ranging from China and the Netherlands to the UK and US.

Microsoft noted that in 15 of the 52 cases, the software involved could allegedly be traced to a massive commercial counterfeit syndicate that Chinese authorities and the FBI broke up this summer.

Most of the alleged illicit sales were conducted through e-commerce sites.

Microsoft also claims customers were "active" in the identification of counterfeiters by filing piracy reports with the company after the its anti-piracy technology, Windows Genuine Advantage, indicated fake software to the user.

Through users' tips, Microsoft said, it also gleaned enough information to refer 22 criminal cases to various law enforcement agencies around the world.

Counterfeit copies of its digital goods cost members of the worldwide software industry an estimated US$40 billion annually, according to Microsoft.

The tech titan also cited a study conducted by the Business Software Alliance and market researcher IDC that put the global PC software piracy rate at 35 percent last year.

Australia and New Zealand: ex-convicts, not pirates
None of the law suits Microsoft has launched in this round involve people from Australia or New Zealand.

According to the Business Software Alliance and IDC's joint 2006 study of worldwide piracy rates, Australia and New Zealand unsurprisingly have some of the lowest rates of counterfeit software in the world at 30 percent.

However the BSA and IDC study claims the value of lost revenue was in the vicinity of US$500 million.

Although the report found that the US had the lowest piracy rate in the world in 2006 at 21 percent of all software sold, the value of the losses there was globally the greatest at US$7.2 billion: almost US$2 billion more than in China.