Is this really a surprise to anyone? On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 6:56 PM, Lizette Koehler <[email protected]>wrote:
> NEON, a Texas-based maker of mainframe utility software, has settled its > lawsuit with IBM and has agreed to stop selling its zPrime product. > > NEON Enterprise Software, a maker of mainframe software, announced it has > settled its legal dispute with IBM and will immediately withdraw its zPrime > product from the market. > > In the May 31 announcement, NEON said that pursuant to the terms of a > permanent injunction, NEON and its distribution partners and affiliates > will > no longer market, sell, license--including any renewal or extension of any > existing license, install, distribute, export, import, offer to sell, offer > to license, offer to install, offer to distribute, offer to export or offer > to import zPrime. > > Moreover, the legal dispute was settled with no payments having been made > by > either party to the other as part of the settlement. > > According to the NEON press release on the settlement: > > “The U.S. District Court has ruled that (1) only workloads expressly > authorized by IBM may be processed on Specialty Engines (including zIIPs > and > zAAPs) and (2) IBM’s contracts, including the IBM Customer Agreement and > the > License Agreement for Machine Code, prohibit software (a) that enables > workloads not expressly authorized by IBM to be processed on Specialty > Engines or (b) that circumvents IBM’s technological measures in Machine > Code > that protect the Built-in Capacity of Specialty Engines and enables > workloads not expressly authorized by IBM to be processed on Specialty > Engines. Neon has agreed to a permanent injunction under which it will > withdraw zPrime from the market and request that licensees and customers > remove and destroy their copies of zPrime. Neon will not renew, extend or > transfer any existing zPrime license or any warranty, maintenance or > service > period of any existing zPrime license (or any portion thereof).” > > NEON filed suit against IBM in the U.S. District Court for the Western > District of Texas in December 2009, claiming IBM was using anticompetitive > mainframe tactics. IBM came back and countersued NEON in January of 2010 > for > unfair business practices and anticompetitive behavior of its own, namely > copyright violation. NEON then amended its complaint in February 2010 > sharing more specific details of IBM’s alleged anticompetitive behavior. > > In a June 2009 press release announcing zPrime, NEON said: > > “NEON zPrime can save companies with System z mainframes 20 percent or more > of their annual mainframe hardware and software costs under conventional > use-pricing structures. Unlike any approach to date that attempts to > offload > processing from a System z central processor, or CP, to IBM specialty > processors such as System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) or > System z Application Assist Processors (zAAP), zPrime easily enables the > shift of huge amounts of routine workloads running on CPs to these > equally-fast but lower-cost specialty processors.” > > Meanwhile, this settlement with IBM does not affect any other NEON > products, > the company said. > > > http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Infrastructure/NEON-Settles-Mainframe-Software-L > awsuit-with-IBM-848628/<http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Infrastructure/NEON-Settles-Mainframe-Software-L%0Aawsuit-with-IBM-848628/> > > > Lizette > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO > Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
