It seems that Symantec and Microsoft are again warring each other. And Vista could be stopped from development.

How this happened?

It seems that Symantec sued Microsoft on May, 18th, seeking damages and also asked the court to make Microsoft remove Symantec’s storage technology from several Microsoft products including Windows Vista.

“We’re asking them to remove the technology, because it belongs to us,” a Symantec spokesman said.

The whole thing is about the agreement signed on August 1996 between the two companies that granted Microsoft the right to use Veritas Software’s volume management technology in its Windows NT product.

But Veritas was purchased last year by Symantec with $10.2 billion.

Symantec claims that Microsoft misappropriated its technology and even tricked the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office into granting Microsoft patents based on Symantec intellectual property. The security and storage vendor also says that portions of Microsoft’s next-generation Vista and “Longhorn” server OSes are based on this misappropriated software.

From PcWorld:

“Microsoft believes it has every right to use the Veritas technology, the company said in a statement. “These claims are unfounded because Microsoft actually purchased intellectual property rights for all relevant technologies from Veritas in 2004,” Microsoft said. “The [1996] contract ultimately gave Microsoft the option to buy out the rights to Veritas? code and intellectual property.”

According to Symantec, however, this 1996 contract prevents Microsoft from developing products that compete with the Veritas software. Vista contains a number of competing features, relating to the way Vista manages data that is stored on a number of hard drives, Symantec said.

Microsoft’s buy-out was an “ill-conceived effort to whitewash” this breach of the agreement, the court filings state.”

It seems that the problem started like two years ago when Symantec found out that Vista at Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WINHec).

We will keep you informed whether Vista will be delayed once again or not.