Cisco accused of monopoly in anti-trust lawsuit

Cisco Systems is the target of an antitrust lawsuit that accuses the vendor of holding a maintenance services monopoly for its networking equipment. Multiven, a Redwood City, Calif.-based company that provides network maintenance and consulting services, filed the lawsuit Tuesday in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., where Cisco is based. In the suit, Multiven alleges that Cisco harmed it and consumers by requiring customers to buy Cisco Smartnet maintenance services in order to receive bug fixes, patches and updates. The suit alleges that Cisco's practices prevent competitors such as Multiven from servicing Cisco networking equipment, according to a statement from Multiven. Cisco's actions had "monopolistic, anticompetitive and injurious effects in the marketplace for network services," Mutiven alleges in the statement. Multiven accuses Cisco of suppressing competition for service and maintenance of its networking equipment, depriving customers of choice by forcing them to purchase Cisco Smartnet and harming consumers by maintaining "supracompetitive prices" for services of "reduced and constrained" quantity, quality and variety, according to Multiven's statement. Cisco disputes Multiven's claims, plans to "vigorously defend" itself and is "confident that we will prevail in the matter," according to a Cisco statement provided to ChannelWeb. Click Here to Continue Reading