Compuware: Hit By Its Own Torpedoes
February 11, 2004
In my Navy days I was a carrier sailor, not a submariner. But I still heard the story about the valor of the submarine USS TANG, sunk in the middle of a furious battle in 1944 by one of its own faulty torpedos with the loss of all but nine of its crew. TANG’s skipper, Richard O’Kane, was one of the most successful U.S. sub skippers of WW II; he was awarded the Medal of Honor after he and his surviving crew were released from Japanese captivity at the end of the war.
(In re-reading this essay before posting it, I wonder whether I’ll be guilty of poor taste in using TANG’s epic saga as a motif for a far less-heroic tale. But many of you will have never heard of either TANG or O’Kane, and you should, so here goes.)
Compuware, a mainframe computer software vendor, seems to have been hit by several of its own torpedoes. In 2002, it launched a copyright- and trade-secret lawsuit against IBM, its former alliance partner. Not long afterwards, CompuWare’s own assertions were re-directed at them, as part of a class-action securities lawsuit. Last week, Compuware’s motion to dismiss the class-action lawsuit was denied in part, leaving the unfortunate Compuware to the tender mercies of the securities plaintiffs’ bar. See In re Compuware Securities Litigation, _ F. Supp.2d _, 2004 WL 231464 (E.D. Mich. Feb. 3, 2004) (link via Securities Litigation Watch.)