In a new suit that echoes earlier charges from Netscape, Sun Microsystems and others, Microsoft is accused of bullying companies out of using Burst.com products and stealing the streaming company's technology. The suit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claims Microsoft's upcoming video encoding and decoding product, Corona, includes Burst's patented video-delivery technology. The company also alleges that Microsoft pressured partners and customers, including Intel and RealNetworks, into dropping support for Burst technology. And it claims Microsoft intentionally caused Burst's products to be incompatible with Windows software.

In the complaint, lawyers for Burst said Microsoft's actions have caused the company "serious and continuing damage and have deprived consumers of valuable new technologies that threatened to disturb Microsoft's strategy to maintain and expand its operating system's dominance to the delivery of high-quality video over the Internet." Burst said Microsoft gained access to its streaming technology while the two companies were trying to negotiate a deal for the rights to it. Burst said those talks fell through and instead Microsoft took the technology and put it in Corona.