Corel Corp is asking the Canadian International Trade Tribunal to investigate why the Canadian Defense Department chose Microsoft Corp’s Office over Corel’s WordPerfect suite. The Canadian government awarded an $6.3m contract to Microsoft last week for 40,000 installations of Office. Corel has 10 days to file supporting evidence and the tribunal 90 days to decide whether such a probe is necessary. Corel said it was told its bid was rejected because WordPerfect, which it acquired in March (CI No 2,866), could not import files from another Microsoft program, but Corel demonstrated on two occasions how WordPerfect could read the documents.
