The Business Software Alliance (BSA) says that so far this year it has carried out 300 investigations into businesses reported to be using software illegally.

Many of these are as a result of tip-offs from staff in those companies. This represents a 23 per cent increase on the same period last year.

The BSA is urging businesses to manage their software as they would any other valuable business asset, and has launched an improved version of its Software Asset Management tool.

A BSA spokeswoman said: "The use of the word 'guilty' in our press release
was a mistake. We have investigated 300 cases brought to our notice but
none of these have led to court action so far. These things take a long
time."

BSA is an industry-funded body set up to tackle software piracy. Its members include Microsoft, Adobe and Apple.