Among the cases Microsoft is going public with include the successful prosecution and sentencing of two people in China who sold customers unlicensed software by forging Microsoft Open Licenses, Finn said. Each of the defendants received a sentence of six months in prison by the Nanning Quingxiu Peoples Court on Oct. 7, according to Microsoft.

Another case in Japan is the most significant criminal prosecution Microsoft has seen in that country around this kind of fraud, Finn said. Microsoft Japan this month filed criminal action against an alleged software pirate accused of selling counterfeit versions of Windows XP online that possibly affected 50,000 sales, he said.

One of the results of Microsoft's years of effort to crack down on software piracy and counterfeiting is an automated software validation system first revealed in 2005 called Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA).

WGA started as an update for Windows XP but then was built into Windows Vista. It in its early days for bugs that would identify people's genuine copies of Windows as counterfeit or pirated, but Microsoft seems to have smoothed out the process since then.

Though it's just one of many tactics Microsoft is using to crack down on piracy and counterfeiting, the software-validation system has been instrumental in finding and prosecuting people around the world for criminal activity around its software, Finn said. Another strategy the company and local authorities have used include sending investigators to make test purchases of software