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.