CA sues Rocket Software for source code theft

Computerworld - CA Inc. said today it is bringing a $200 million lawsuit against Rocket Software Inc., saying Rocket stole intellectual property related to CA database management software products.

The suit, filed late yesterday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, argues that Rocket, in Newton, Mass., infringed CA copyrights, stole trade secrets and practiced unfair competition.

A woman answering the phones at the corporate offices of Rocket said she was instructed to say that Rocket had no comment on the matter at this time.

"The facts here demonstrate blatant misappropriation by Rocket of CA's intellectual property," said Gary Brown, CA's director of litigation in a statement from CA. "We believe that Rocket's management not only condoned the conduct of its employees, but also made false and misleading statements to cover up this conduct. We will take all appropriate measures to protect our intellectual property."

In the 27-page complaint, CA said Rocket "knowingly and intentionally stole from CA the source code and development environment" to create many of Rocket's software tools for the IBM DB2 relational database management system. Rocket obtained the source code by hiring former CA programmers and developers or workers from Platinum Technology International Inc., which CA acquired in 1999, the complaint said. The complaint was signed by Scott Lindvall, an attorney for CA who is a specialist in patent law at the New York firm of Kaye Scholer LLP.

CA said Rocket continues to distribute DB2 tools that infringe CA's copyrights and that have defrauded CA of millions of dollars in the $1.4 billion DB2 software tool market. In addition to seeking damages of at least $200 million from Rocket, CA wants a judge to enjoin Rocket from further distribution of Rocket's database management software.

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