Anti-trust claim lobbed at IBM

IBM is accused of unfairly using its position within the mainframe market

IBM could soon find itself fending off antitrust accusations in the EU, after T3 Technologies filed a complaint with the European Commission alleging that IBM is unfairly using its position within the mainframe market to sell bundled hardware and software systems.

T3, which hails from Florida and bills itself as 'the other mainframe company', launched a similar complaint with the US Department Of Justice in 2007.

In that filing, the company alleged that IBM unfairly used its dominance over the mainframe software market to push its own hardware.

"Because 85 per cent of mainframe users have adopted IBM's operating systems, thousands of companies have invested over $1tn [£726bn] in IBM-compatible software and hardware," reads the filing.

"Those users (who reasonably expected that IBM would continue fairly and reasonably offering its operating system and technical support for use on competing hardware) are not 'locked in' to using IBM-compatible hardware and software."

The complaint alleges that Big Blue began to push T3 out of the market in 2002 by making it difficult for customers to install IBM software on T3 mainframe hardware.

IBM had faced a similar complaint from Platform Solutions, although the case was snuffed out when IBM bought the company last summer and both sides agreed to drop the legal claims.