IBM Files Lawsuit Against LzLabs for Intellectual Property Rights Violation

IBM filed a suit against LzLabs. The American tech giant claims that the Switzerland-based company has violated its intellectual property rights by repeatedly infringing upon company patents protecting various aspects of IBM's high-performance mainframe systems, a core technology that clients depend on for their most important workloads.

In the legal action filed in U.S. District Court in Waco, Texas, IBM asserts that LzLabs has also deliberately misappropriated IBM trade secrets by reverse engineering, reverse compiling, and translating IBM software. IBM also alleges that LzLabs has made false and misleading claims about LzLabs' products. IBM is seeking relief that includes an injunction against LzLabs to prevent further unlawful use of IBM's intellectual property and trade secrets.

LzLabs is owned and run by some of the same individuals who previously owned and ran Neon Enterprise Software. Neon previously attempted to free ride on IBM's mainframe business, and prior litigation between IBM and Neon ended with a U.S. District Court permanently barring Neon and certain of its key employees from, among other things, reverse engineering, reverse compiling and translating certain software, and also from continuing to distribute certain Neon software products. IBM said in a statement it will aggressively defend its investments and resulting patents against those who violate them, as LzLabs has now repeatedly done.