The complaint, filed 2dn July, has asked a US District Judge in
Chicago to bar Quest from selling any software products that were
developed by using the allegedly stolen code. The company is also
seeking to recover any profits that rival Quest made from these
products.
CA claims that four Quest employees stole the source code for a
database management program they had been developing while they
were employees of Platinum Technology. The four programmers joined
Quest after Platinum was acquired by CA in June 1999.
According to the CA complaint, the programmers took a CD with
blueprints for the Platinum software and shared it with other Quest
workers to develop a competing product.
CA claims that it sent several letters to Quest stating that
some employees had stolen and copied source code from Platinum,
however Quest said that it was unaware of anything that would
support CA’s claims.
Quest’s software licence revenue increased 37% in 2001.
According to the company, this increase was the result of
introducing Quest Central DB2, the corporate database management
software that CA alleges is based on the Platinum blueprints.
A spokesman for CA said: “We have a right to protect our
intellectual property and that’s what we are doing in this
case.”
Quest refused to comment on the case.
