Their friends have been urging it for ages, and with IBM Corp and Comdisco Inc both now under new management, it was always on the cards that they would end their silly and exorbitantly costly litigation, and on Friday they announced a settlement, which sees IBM coming out on top, although the big leaser in Rosemount, Illinois comes away with a few sops. Under the agreement, Comdisco will pay IBM $50m in cash and $20m in a convertible note. IBM and IBM Credit Corp had charged that assets owned by IBM Credit were illegally misappropriated by Comdisco, and that Comdisco had manufactured add-on memory boards and marketed them as genuine IBM memory, eligible for IBM maintenance (it had been genuine IBM memory but had been cannibalised from old machines and reassembled.) Comdisco has agreed to label altered memory and other parts as not being IBM parts, and to warn customers that such parts are not eligible for IBM maintenance. It agreed not to sublease, relocate or sell IBM Credit property without prior written consent. As to the sops, the two have agreed to provide mutual back-up support for disaster recovery services in response to specific customer requirements, and will discuss Comdisco’s possible inclusion in IBM’s mid-range product distribution network. Observers hope that this is only the start, and that IBM will settle all its other suits and get back to work.
