CyberMedia Inc has filed suit against PC utilities rival Symantec Corp, alleging copyright infringement and theft of trade secrets. In the suit, filed Thursday in the Northern District of California, San Jose-based CyberMedia claims that the code in Symantec’s Uninstall Deluxe product was derived from an earlier version of CyberMedia’s competeing UnInstaller program. Cybermedia is seeking unspecified compensatory damages and is seeking a court oder that Symantec stops selling the product and recalls all copies of it from distributors. The suit also names as defendants Atalanta-based software developer ZebraSoft Inc and its founders, who claim to have authored the Symantec program. Adding weight to that contention is the fact that ZebraSoft’s founders were formerly employed at MicroHelp Inc, the company that developed the early versions of the UnInstaller product which was later acquired by CyberMedia. There has been bad blood between the two companies in the past, as several key Symantec executives left the company in November 1996 to join Cybermedia.
