Los Angeles, May 20 :

US-based anti-virus company Symantec has accused computer-industry giant Microsoft (MS) of misappropriating its data storage technologies.

Symantec has filed a lawsuit today over the issue in a federal court in the state of Washington, where Microsoft is based. Over nearly a decade, Microsoft has ‘deliberately and surreptitiously’ misappropriated Symantec’s storage technologies, misled and thereby convinced the US government to issue patents to Microsoft, based on technologies invented by Symantec,” the firm said in its complaint.

The California-based company charged that Microsoft overstepped the bounds of the licensing deal between the two companies and broke the terms of the contract by denying Symantec access to Microsoft source codes.

MS, however, argued that Symantec’s suit stemmed from ‘a very narrow disagreement’ regarding the terms of a 1996 licensing deal MS had with software security firm Veritas, which Symantec acquired last year.

MS said it licensed the volume management technology from Veritas in 1996 and exercised an option to buy the software code and intellectual property rights in 2004.