Symantec Sues Microsoft over Vista

Symantec requested that a U.S. court stop the development of Microsoft Windows Vista.

Symantec claims that Microsoft was wrongfully incorporating Veritas’s storage technology into the new Windows Vista OS.

Symantec began litigation Thursday by suing for unspecified damages and asking the court to remove Symantec’s storage technology from a variety of Microsoft products, including Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and the upcoming Vista and “Longhorn” Windows Server products.

“We’re asking them to remove the technology, because it belongs to us,” a Symantec spokesman said.

The dispute centers on an August 1996 agreement between the two companies that granted Microsoft the right to use Veritas’s volume-management technology in its Windows NT product. Symantec purchased Veritas in a $10.2 billion acquisition that closed last year.

Symantec claims that Microsoft misappropriated its technology and even tricked the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office into granting Microsoft patents based on Symantec intellectual property.

“These claims are unfounded because Microsoft actually purchased intellectual property rights for all relevant technologies from Veritas in 2004,” Microsoft said.

Microsoft’s buyout was an “ill-conceived effort to whitewash” this breach of the agreement, the court filings state.

The two companies have been working at resolving the dispute since 2004. During that period, Symantec learned that “Microsoft was so bold as to file fraudulent documents with the U.S. government, claiming stake to certain Veritas inventions,” the court filings state.

More information about Vista and Symantec’s purchase of Veritas can be found at PCWorld.com.

For more related coverage, read Symantec Struggling for Growth in Its Latest Quarter and Microsoft to Announce Vista Minimum Requirements.

This article is posted on our Microsoft Informer page. For more news on the Redmond, Wash.-based powerhouse, keep checking in.

— Robert McMillan, IDG News Service