WASHINGTON (AFP) - Software firm Novell saidit filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp., alleging the software giant employed anticompetitive practices to thwart the WordPerfect software program a decade ago.
Waltham, Massachusetts-based Novell had said on Monday it planned to sue Microsoft over the program, which it owned from June 1994 to March 1996 after its merger with WordPerfect Corp.
Novell's lawsuit comes four days after Microsoft agreed to pay Novell 536 million dollars to settle a dispute over Novell's NetWare operating system, which is used to run computer networks and competes against Microsoft's dominant Windows products.
As part of the settlement, Novell said it would pull out of a European Commission antitrust case against Microsoft. Microsoft, in a statement on Friday, said Novell seeks to blame it for its own "mismanagement and poor business decisions."
It called the lawsuit "unfortunate and surprising" since Novell owned WordPerfect for a short amount of time.
"There are other fundamental flaws in Novell's complaint," Microsoft said in a statement.
"Given that Novell hasn't owned WordPerfect for eight years, their claims should be barred by the legal doctrine called the Statute of Limitations."
Novell said its case is based partly on the US government's antitrust suit, in which Microsoft was found to have eliminated competition in software markets as part of its unlawful monopoly in computer operating systems.
Microsoft's Word has become the dominant word processing program.
WordPerfect and Quattro Pro were sold in 1996 to Corel Corporation for about 170 million dollars, but their value had been estimated at about one billion dollars in 1994, Novell said.
11/12/2004 - 23:51 GMT - AFP