Microsoft has filed suit against Salesforce.com, alleging patent
infringement.
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Seattle,
contends that Salesforce.com has infringed on nine Microsoft patents in pushing
its SAAS (software as a service) CRM to
customers.
Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft corporate vice president and deputy general
counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing, issued the following statement:
"Microsoft has filed an action
today, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington,
against Salesforce.com for infringement of nine Microsoft patents by their CRM product.
"Microsoft has been a leader and
innovator in the software industry for decades and continues to invest billions
of dollars each year in bringing great software products and services to
market. We have a responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders
to safeguard that investment, and therefore cannot stand idly by when others
infringe our IP rights."
In short, Salesforce.com, the company with the tagline "No Software,"
has evoked the wrath of the world's largest software company. The battle
between on-premises and cloud-based software has left the marketplace and
entered the courts as adoption of the cloud model continues to take off.
Microsoft offers its own cloud solutions, such as its xRM platform, as it
continues to provide on-premises software and encourage customers to run hybrid
environments.
A spokesperson for Salesfore.com said the company had no comment on the
lawsuit.
Microsoft is calling for relief in the way of treble damages and injunctions
against Salesforce.com for the solutions that allegedly infringe on Microsoft
patents.
The Microsoft patents in the lawsuit cover issues such as, "Method and
system for mapping between logical data and physical data," "System
and method for providing and displaying a Web page having an embedded menu,"
"Method and system for stacking tool bars in a computer display" and "Automated
Website creation using template-driven generation of active server page
applications."
Microsoft and Salesforce.com compete in the cloud-based CRM
space and also have an emerging competition for the hearts and minds of
developers in that space. While Microsoft may have a leg up with developers
building .NET-based applications,
Salesforce.com, particularly through its recent partnership with VMware, has a
strong position with enterprise Java developers based on its new connection
with the SpringSource Spring Framework.
At the end of April, Salesforce.com and VMware announced VMforce,
a new cloud environment that will provide an open path to the cloud for 6
million enterprise Java developers, including the 2 million-member Spring
community.
According to Salesforce.com's Website, the company's products and services
include:
"· The Sales Cloud, for sales
force automation and contact management
· The Service Cloud, for customer
service and support solutions
· Chatter, for social collaboration
· The Force.com platform, for custom
application development
· The AppExchange, the world's
leading marketplace for enterprise cloud computing applications"
Also according to the Salesforce.com Website, as of Jan. 31, "Salesforce.com
manages customer information for approximately 72,500 customers, including
Allianz Commercial, Dell, Japan
Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE and SunTrust Banks."
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