Bentley Systems v. Oiltech Engineering

Bentley Systems Inc. v. Oiltech Engineering (India) Private Limited is a commercial copyright suit decided by the High Court of Delhi on 2026-03-10. Bentley Systems and its Indian subsidiary sued an engineering company based in Chennai, and one of its directors, for using unlicensed copies of Bentley’s STAAD.Pro and SACS structural analysis software. The evidence of use came largely from reports generated by the software itself. The defendants did not bring a written defence on record, and the court granted summary judgment. It issued a permanent injunction and awarded Bentley its costs of Rs. 5,55,087.^[1]

Background

Bentley pleaded that it owns the copyright in STAAD, a structural analysis and design application, and SACS, a finite element package for offshore structures. Both programs were first published and registered in the United States and are protected in India under section 40 of the Copyright Act, 1957 and the International Copyright Order, 1999.^[1]

According to the plaint, Bentley implemented Phone Home Technology. The technology “verifies compliances of End-User License Agreement (EULA) and records unauthorized usage as ‘infringement hits’”. Bentley also keeps a database of its licensees. Use going beyond the EULA or the Customer License and Online Services Agreement (CLOSA) was pleaded as both a breach of contract and an infringement.^[1] Bentley’s current EULA contains the contractual basis for such a mechanism. The software “may include a security mechanism that can detect the installation or use of illegal copies of the Software and collect and transmit data about those illegal copies”, and use of the software is consent to it.^[2]

The defendant company had been an Enterprise License Service customer of Bentley from 2016-05-31 to 2017-05-30. It had bought one SACS licence in 2016, which expired in 2017. At the time of the suit it held three MicroStation licences and no STAAD or SACS licence. In 2019 it discussed buying SACS through Bentley’s Indian channel partner but did not purchase.^[1]

The dispute

In October 2022 Bentley learned from internal sources that the company was using STAAD.Pro and SACS. Its infringement portal showed use of STAAD Foundation Advanced CONNECT Edition and SACS CONNECT Edition, with add-ins, on at least one computer each at the company’s Chengalpattu and Bengaluru offices from August 2022.^[1] The steps Bentley then took were, in order:

1. Litigation hold notice dated 2022-10-11, asking the defendants to preserve evidence. The company’s IT head replied on 2022-10-17 denying any unauthorized use.
2. Sales outreach by Bentley’s channel partner between October and December 2022, without result.
3. Independent investigation. An investigator found employee profiles mentioning SACS and STAAD work. In a telephone call, an offshore structural engineer at the company confirmed using both programs.
4. Pre-institution mediation before the Delhi High Court Mediation and Conciliation Centre (Mediation Petition No. 434/2022). The defendants said no evidence of infringement had been shared and that an internal audit of their IT systems had found no unauthorized Bentley software. The mediation ended “Not Settled”.
5. Suit and injunction. After a further check of the infringement portal in January 2023, Bentley filed suit. It obtained an ex parte ad interim injunction on 2023-01-30.

Source for all five steps: the judgment.^[1]

In May 2024 the portal showed fresh use in breach of the injunction, with the last recorded date 2024-05-08. The report relied on by the court showed SACS CONNECT Edition used “at least 338 times” in the Bengaluru office up to that date. It showed STAAD Foundation Advanced CONNECT used at least three times on one computer in Chengalpattu up to September 2022.^[1]

Decision or outcome

The defendants filed a written statement in April 2023, but it stayed under objections and was never brought on record. Their right to file it was closed in September 2023. A final opportunity conditioned on costs of Rs. 1 lakh was not taken up, and an extension was refused in February 2024. Their reply to Bentley’s summary judgment application, filed in March 2025, also remained under objections, and the right to reply was closed on 2025-11-13.^[1]

Applying Order XIII-A of the Code of Civil Procedure as amended by the Commercial Courts Act, 2015, the court held that the facts in the plaint were deemed admitted. The defendants had “no real prospect of successfully defending the claim”.^[1] It found that the defendants had infringed Bentley’s copyright in STAAD and SACS. Nothing on record showed that the use at the two offices was authorized or licensed.^[1]

Bentley did not press its damages claim. The court decreed:^[1]

• a permanent injunction restraining the defendants from copying, reproducing, storing, installing or using pirated or unlicensed Bentley software, including SACS and STAAD and any other Bentley program;
• costs of Rs. 5,55,087, payable jointly and severally. The sum covered official and court fees (Rs. 2,01,000), investigation, surveillance and miscellaneous expenses (Rs. 2,54,087) and legal fees (Rs. 1,00,000).

Significance for software licensing and SAM practice

The points below are commentary on the judgment and Bentley’s published terms.

• Telemetry as evidence. The case shows a vendor using usage reports generated by its own software, combined with an investigator’s contact and the customer’s licence history, to identify and prove unlicensed use. Bentley’s current terms provide for this kind of collection. The EULA provides for anti-piracy detection.^[2] The Bentley Analytics Program lists identifying unauthorized use, “including license compliance activities”, as a purpose of usage data.^[3] An internal audit that finds no installations does not rebut per-machine usage reports unless it covers the same machines and period.
• Lapsed subscriptions. The defendant had once held a SACS licence under an Enterprise License Service, and that licence had expired. Continued use of a product after a subscription ends is unlicensed use, not a renewal question.
• Owning some licences is no defence for others. The company’s three valid MicroStation licences did not cover STAAD or SACS. Entitlements are per product, and a SAM baseline should reconcile Bentley usage reports product by product.
• Procedure matters. The decree followed from the defendants’ failure to put a defence on record, not from a contested trial on the telemetry. The judgment therefore does not test how reliable “infringement hits” are as evidence.
• Escalation path. Before suing, Bentley sent a litigation hold notice, made sales outreach through a channel partner and tried pre-litigation mediation. A customer receiving such a notice is at the start of a documented enforcement sequence. For the general practice see software license audit and license compliance.

Lessons learned

• Usage reports generated by a vendor’s own software can be the core evidence of unlicensed use, so an internal audit must cover the same machines and period. The court relied on infringement hits from the portal, and the defendants’ internal audit finding no unauthorized software did not answer them.^[1][2]
• A lapsed subscription or a licence for a different product does not authorise continued use of a product. The company’s SACS licence had expired in 2017 and its three MicroStation licences did not cover STAAD or SACS.^[1]
• A notice to preserve evidence starts a documented enforcement sequence, and failing to put a defence on record can lead to summary judgment. Bentley moved from a litigation hold notice to mediation and suit, and the facts in the plaint were deemed admitted.^[1]