A Houston federal judge ordered International Business Machines Corp. to pay $1.6 billion to BMC Software Inc. for swapping in its software while servicing their mutual client, Bloomberg reports.
The U.S. District Judge Gray Miller, after a seven-day non-jury trial, rejected IBM’s claim that their mutual client AT&T Inc., opted to switch software products on its own.
The judge ruled that IBM’s role in the decision to dump BMC “smacked of intentional wrongdoing.”
BMC prosecuted IBM in 2017, alleging breach of their agreement and poaching of AT&T’s software business when the two companies renewed their power-sharing deal in 2015.
IBM countered that AT&T dumped BMC’s products and jumped to IBM, claiming a clean chit.
IBM serviced AT&T’s mainframe computers for over ten years, which ran on rival BMC’s software products.
