Microsoft has its sights trained on another bunch of Chinese software pirates, this time pitting its formidable resources against nine resellers it said installed illegal copies of Windows onto PCs they sold. Redmond said it started proceedings against the resellers in seven cities across the People’s Republic including Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chongqing and Chengdu.

The nine firms in the dock are accused of pre-installing pirated copies of Windows onto Lenovo, Dell, HP and other machines before flogging them to punters. “We want to send a clear message that PC channel piracy is not only IPR theft, but also poses serious security risks to consumers,” said Tim Cranton, Microsoft Greater China’s chief legal officer, in a canned statement.