Salesforce strikes back against Microsoft's May patent suit

Last month, Microsoft sued Customer relationship management (CRM) software company Salesforce for nine counts of patent infringement in the District Court in the Western District of Washington.

The complaint appeared to be a defensive maneuver after Salesforce purchased cloud data management provider Jigsaw, a company in which Microsoft had important interests.

On Thursday, Salesforce filed a countersuit in the U.S. District Court of Delaware, accusing Microsoft of "continuing acts of infringement," which "have caused, and are causing irreparable harm to Salesforce.com."

The lawsuit singles out Microsoft's SharePoint product and .NET platform, accusing them of violating five of Salesforce's patents:

#6,813,633, "Dynamic multi-level cache manager."
#6,918,059, "Method and system for handling errors in a distributed computer system."
#7,024,454, "Work sharing and communicating in a web site system."
#7,209,929, "Java object cache server for databases."
#7,305,454, "Apparatus and methods for provisioning services."

Salesforce seeks an injunction on the allegedly offending products.