The complaint targets the customer-relationship management, or CRM, software that is the hallmark of Salesforce.com’s business. It seeks a court order that would prevent the San Francisco-based company from providing features that Microsoft claims it invented.
Salesforce.com, founded in 1999, sells subscriptions to Internet business software that runs marketing campaigns and tracks sales leads. It competes against Microsoft’s Dynamics programs in the CRM market and “has profited through infringement of the Microsoft patents-in-suit,” according to the complaint, filed in federal court in Seattle.
“More and more, we’re seeing Dynamics compete with Salesforce in deals,” said Ray Wang, an analyst with Altimeter Group in San Mateo, California. “Long term, Salesforce and Microsoft are on a collision course for all enterprise software.”
CRM is the fastest-growing part of the $250 billion corporate-software market, with a value of $7 billion to $8 billion a year, he said. The patent dispute pits the world’s largest software maker against the biggest seller of Internet- based customer-management programs. Salesforce.com had more than $1.3 billion in sales last year.
Jane Hynes, a Salesforce.com spokeswoman, declined to comment.
Navigation Features
Some of the patents cover how the software operates, such as a way to determine which version a person is using to see if it needs to be updated, or features that make the software easier to use, including tool bars and navigation of menus.
“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,” said Horacio Gutierrez, the Redmond, Washington-based company’s deputy general counsel for intellectual property and licensing. Microsoft “cannot stand idly by when others infringe” our intellectual property rights, he said.
In a regulatory filing, Salesforce said it was contacted last year by a “large technology company” alleging patent- infringement and said it was in discussions with the company.
“The resolution of this claim is not expected to have a material adverse effect on our financial condition, but it could be material to the net income or cash flows or both of a particular quarter,” Salesforce said in the filing.
Salesforce.com Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff, who founded the company, has said he wants customers and software developers to write online applications on his system, dubbed Force.com, much the way personal computer programs run on Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
Source : www.businessweek.com
