The Business Software Alliance has agreed to a record $3.5 million settlement with an international media company for widely using unlicensed software, reports InfoWorld.

As part of the settlement, the company cannot be named. The software in question, by trade group members Adobe, Autodesk, Avid and Microsoft, was central to the company's core functions. A company spokesman said a single person was responsible for licensing the software across multiple locations during a time of rapid growth, reports vnunet.com.

As a result of the trade group's complaints, last year police raided the company and froze its assets. The settlement requires the company to delete all unlicensed software and purchase the licenses for the software it plans to use. The penalty resulted from the length of time the company used the unlicensed software, the trade group said.