A federal appeals court in Miami has ruled that Eric Lundgren, a local recycling entrepreneur whose Chatsworth business IT Asset Partners Inc. turned old parts into new machines, must serve a 15-month prison sentence for violating Microsoft Corp.’s intellectual property rights when he copied 28,000 Dell reinstallation disks with the intent of selling them to computer refurbishers. As previously reported by the Business Journal, Lundgren pled guilty last spring to conspiring to traffic counterfeit goods and criminal copyright infringement. Prosecutors valued the infringed goods at $700,000, which according to sentencing guidelines put his prison stay at 37 to 46 months. The judge in the case gave him 15. Lundgren appealed his sentence on the grounds that the prosecutors had incorrectly calculated the value of the discs, which Microsoft claimed was $25 each. He argued that the value of the discs was zero, since they did not include a licensed copy of Microsoft’s software, according to court documents. Lundgren was initially granted a temporary stay; a ruling filed April 11 affirmed the 15-month sentence. A representative for Lundgren did not return a request for comment by press time.
