Apple Adds Microsoft, Intel to Lawsuit : Computers: Company says its longtime rivals took part in plagiarizing the QuickTime multimedia technology.

Apple Computer Inc. lashed out against longtime rivals Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp. on Thursday, accusing the two firms in a lawsuit of plagiarizing a key piece of Apple’s multimedia technology.

Apple added Microsoft and Intel to a suit already pending in U.S. District Court in San Jose against San Francisco Canyon, an eight-person company that had contracted with Apple to convert the Apple QuickTime technology for use on computers that use Intel’s microprocessors and Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

Apple alleges that Canyon illegally copied thousands of lines of code from QuickTime when Intel and Microsoft approached it to develop a similar technology. The amendment filed Thursday requests that all three companies immediately stop shipping products--including Microsoft’s Video for Windows--that contain the code in question. It also seeks unspecified damages.

QuickTime, originally released in May, 1993, helped fuel the fledgling multimedia industry by providing a badly needed standard for displaying video on a PC screen. Apple’s Macintosh has been a popular platform for multimedia developers, in part because of QuickTime.

Apple has also released a version of the software to run on Windows-based computers, not only to gain royalties from sales, but also to encourage multimedia developers to write software to run both on the Macintosh and in Windows. But Microsoft’s Video for Windows performs many of the same functions as QuickTime, and it works only on Windows-equipped machines.

“Apple has spent significant time and resources in developing the QuickTime technology,” said David Nagel, senior vice president at Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple. “We cannot and will not stand by and watch the fruits of our research and development efforts being plundered.”

Officials of Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft said they hadn’t received copies of the complaint and couldn’t comment.

Likewise, Intel spokesman Howard High said the Santa Clara, Calif., firm had not seen the complaint, but he said rewriting the code believed to be at issue would be “no big deal” and would take only about two weeks of work.

Apple said it will not seek damages from developers that have used the code illegally if they sign an “amnesty” agreement, and it said it has dropped a $300 licensing fee for developers who want to use QuickTime in the future.

Indeed, some analysts said that one of Apple’s goals with the case is simply to raise its profile among the multimedia community.

“According to what Apple has stated, they clearly have a case,” said Bruce Ryon, principal multimedia analyst at Dataquest, a San Jose consulting firm. “But I think they’re really leveraging it to gain some visibility for QuickTime too.”