The press giant issued High Court proceedings against John and Julie Hogan of Pontefract after it discovered, during Drupa, that they were selling copies of its Sherlock software.

The software, designed for internal service staff only, lists all of the firm's spare parts and also has information on repairing certain equipment, offering obvious appeal to independent engineers, dealers and users alike.

The firm applied for a search and disclosure order, with which the Hogans failed to comply, and as a result Julie Hogan was arrested. In the proceedings that followed last month the Hogans were found guilty of contempt. John Hogan was fined 5,000 but his wife had no further penalty, due to her previous arrest and being pregnant.

The firm identified sales of the pirate software in both the UK and abroad. "We're now in the process of chasing up the disks," said Heidelberg UK  finance director Gerard Heanue. "You have to stamp down on this sort of thing. It cost us quite a lot of money to go after them but it was well worth it."

The firm also had cause for cheer as its half-year results show that its losses had halved and it was on course to post a year-end profit in the "mid-double-digit million euro range". "We definitely feel we're on the right road following the sale of the web and digital divisions," said Heanue.

Post tax losses were reduced to 41m (E59m), including the 43m loss from the offloaded digital and web divisions, compared to 90m last year.

Once adjusted for the sale of its web and digital divisions, the group's sales have risen 8% on last year to 955m. The same figures also show a 23% increase in incoming orders to 1.3bn.

Story by Darryl Danielli