Sun Microsystems Inc quietly filed a civil suit in Superior Court in California on March 3 against Axil Workstations and its parent Hyundai Electronics of America, charging the San Jose, California Sparcsystems builder with misappropriation of trade secrets and theft of the layout and manufacturing blueprints for an unreleased Sun-developed system board code named Ambush. The suit seeks injunctive relief and monetary damages and the court has handed down a preliminary injunction forbidding sale of Axil’s Model 230 SparcStation 10 clone and a temporary restraining order on its Model 310. Sun said Axil had no licence to the board. The alleged theft is said to be related to Axil’s hiring a Sun engineer who is named in the suit. Sun said it was bringing action over the alleged theft to keep the playing field level, claiming Axil’s illegal head start cut potential investment in the Sparc architecture. Sun will keep a low profile on the suit lest it catch flak from other Sparcsystem builders.
