The stakes have been raised in Novell’s attempt to smother its clustering technology rival start-up at birth. The Timpanogas Research Group, formerly the Wolf Mountain Group, has filed a multi-million dollar countersuit against Novell Inc charging the company with unfair competition, defamation, abuse of process, wrongly seizing private property and intentionally inflicting emotional distress. The suit, filed in state court in Utah, asks consequential damages of at least $4m and punitive or trebled damages of $12m plus attorneys’ fees and court costs. Timpanogas, set up by ex-Novell employees Jeff Merkey, Larry Angus and Darren Major, is developing what it calls a 32/64 bit, massively scalable, clustered, fault tolerant storage and access technology for Windows NT, Unix and other industry systems. Novell says it is using technologies developed at Novell, so it filed its suit against the then Wolf Mountain Group and its three founders, citing breach of contract, and misappropriation of trade secrets, among other things (CI No 3,155). Novell claims the defendants are using Novell’s proprietary information in building a business competitive with Novell. It obtained a Writ of Replevin which allowed the police to search the homes of Merkey, Angus and Major looking for stolen Novell property, hence the counter suit. However, the defendants have not lost their sense of humor. As if changing the name from Wolf Mountain to Timpanogas, both Ski resorts in Utah, were not enough, the company has also just code- named its planned product, Replevin.
