Austin, Texas-based Versata claims that SAP deliberately refused to share information on its widely-used business planning software, cloned its own version of Versata's pricing program and gave it away for free with SAP's planning platform.

SAP spokesman Guenter Gaugler said the company could not comment because it has not seen the complaint.

Versata's lawyer Thomas Vinje says the case filed Tuesday is very similar to complaints he led against Microsoft by software developers who accused it of refusing to supply key information to make compatible products.

Price configuration software can cost a large business some $5 million and is valuable because it helps companies allocate prices to different versions of their products or services.

Versata sold its pricing programs to companies that use SAP's enterprise resource planning software -- three-quarters of the world's largest firms -- but says it was slowly squeezed out of the market at the end of the 1990s.

It says documents it obtained from SAP during a Texas patent trial showed that SAP targeted the company because its software was "raking in the cash among the SAP customers," according to an SAP executive quoted in the papers.

Vinje said SAP created problems for Versata by refusing to give it information that would let it develop compatible programs, told SAP customers that Versata software wouldn't work with the enterprise software and then developed a similar pricing product.

Versata claims it could still be a market player if the European Commission were to act on its complaint and order SAP to provide interoperability information and detach its pricing software from its main program.

It is also calling for "appropriate fine" on SAP. EU fines can go as high as 10 percent of a company's annual global turnover.

EU antitrust regulators are not required to open an investigation when they receive a complaint -- although they often do.
 

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