EU anti-trust team to investigate IBM

Dave Bailey, Computing, Tuesday 23 March 2010 at 17:29:00

French start-up, TurboHercules, accused of patent infringement by Big Blue

French open source software company
TurboHercules has filed a complaint
to EU competition officials against technology giant IBM, according to a report
in the Financial Times.

The French start-up claims to have asked IBM to license its mainframe
operating systems (OS) for use with Hercules, but says IBM refused, accusing the
start up of patent infringement.

TurboHercules specialises in emulation software used on IBM mainframes.

IBM said they were unable to comment since they hadn?t been notified of the
complaint.

TurboHercules founder Roger Bowler said in the FT that the company had
written to IBM requesting that it license its mainframe operating system for use
with Hercules on reasonable and fair terms.

?Not only did IBM deny our request, but it now claims, after 10 years, that
the Hercules open-source emulator violates IBM intellectual property [the
precise nature of which] it has refused to identify,? said Bowler.

TurboHercules is asking EU competition officials to order IBM to end the
alleged tying of mainframe hardware and software, and make its interfaces and
protocols available.

This is the latest in a line of anti-trust niggles for IBM. The last saw Neon
Enterprise software file
legal papers in a Texas
court which accused IBM of anti-competitive practices.

Full story at http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2260042/turbohercules-asks-eu-anti