Thought Leadership
The virtualization specialist VMware has taken legal action against the American business units of the German technology group Siemens. The core allegation: the use of improperly licensed software.
The lawsuit was filed with the competent court in Delaware at the end of last week. In it, VMware accuses Siemens of having operated significantly more software installations than were covered by purchased licenses.
Support request leads to legal battle
The starting point of the conflict was a support extension that Siemens applied for in September 2024. The company submitted a list of its VMware installations and requested corresponding maintenance services. However, according to VMware, an examination of this list revealed considerable discrepancies with the licenses actually purchased. When VMware pointed out these discrepancies to Siemens, the industrial group insisted that its information was correct – and threatened to take legal action if VMware refused to provide the support services.
VMware then reluctantly granted a 30-day transitional solution in order to avoid business interruptions at Siemens. In the statement of claim, VMware emphasizes that Siemens had no discernible motive to overprovision its own software inventory – this would only have led to higher support and licensing costs.
Backpedaling and refusing transparency
This was followed by a surprising turn of events in October: Siemens withdrew the original list and instead presented a new list that was much more consistent with VMware’s license records. According to VMware, there was no plausible explanation for this change of course.
VMware is particularly critical of Siemens’ refusal to have a software audit carried out – a procedure that is accepted by other business customers without any problems. As VMware had no way of determining the actual extent of software usage at Siemens, the company, which now belongs to Broadcom, was forced to file a lawsuit.
