Symantec has asked a U.S. court to order a halt to the development of Windows Vista, claiming that its rival is wrongfully incorporating Veritas storage technology into its next-generation OS.

Symantec sued Microsoft on Thursday, seeking unspecified damages and also asking the court to remove Symantec's storage technology from a variety of Microsoft products, including Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and the upcoming Vista and "Longhorn" Windows Server products. "We're asking them to remove the technology, because it belongs to us," a Symantec spokesman said Thursday.

The dispute centers around an August 1996 agreement between the two companies that granted Microsoft the right to use Veritas Software's volume management technology in its Windows NT product. Symantec purchased Veritas in a US$10.2 billion acquisition that closed last year.

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.