Novell Accuses Microsoft of Unfair CompetitionNovell Accuses Microsoft of Unfair Competition

Novell Inc. filed a lawsuit Friday against Microsoft claiming the software giant unlawfully attempted to eliminate competition from Novell's WordPerfect and Quattro Pro applications.

The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Utah and follows up on Novell's statement earlier in the week that it would seek legal redress for Microsoft's allegedly anticompetitive behavior.

At issue in the complaint are the word processing and spreadsheet programs, which were owned by Novell in the 1994-96 timeframe. Microsoft and Novell settled a larger antitrust case earlier in the week, but were unable to come to any agreement on the WordPerfect-Quattro Pro issue.

While Novell did not specify any alleged damages in the new litigation, it did claim that the WordPerfect and Quattro Pro applications were worth more than $1 billion when they were acquired in 1994, and that they were sold to the Corel Corp., in March of 1996 for about $170 million.