CA Technologies has filed a lawsuit against New Relic, the application lifecycle management company.

CA is seeking “undisclosed damages” for lost profits. It is also seeking an injunction against New Relic prohibiting the infringement of CA patents and the misuse of the company’s intellectual property. In other words, CA wants a judge to shut down New Relic.

New Relic Founder and CEO Lew Cirne is at the heart of the lawsuit. In 2006, Cirne sold his Wiley Technologies to CA. As part of the agreement, Cirne gave up three patents that CA says Cirne is now using at New Relic. Wiley was a company that also served the ALM space.

Since the acquisition, New Relic and AppDynamics have emerged as two major players in the application lifecycle management space. The founding members of both New Relic and AppDynamics came from Wiley. New Relic has prospered by catering to the needs of developers who need to better understand how apps are performing in data-intensive environments. AppDynamics caters more to the demands of large enterprises.

And Wiley? CA has not shown a lot of traction in the ALM space. That’s not much of a surprise, considering that much of Wiley’s talent moved on to New Relic and AppDynamics.

So it seems that CA has decided that its best offense is in the courts.

According to CA, it acquired three patents as part of the dispute. Cirne is a co-inventor in two of the three patents. Cirne worked for CA after the acquisition. He left in 2007 and formed New Relic in 2008.

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