Well, it appears that Platform Solutions Inc, the IBM-thwarted mainframe wannabe, has taken its list of grievances against Big Blue to the European Commission, as we've suggested it would, and lodged a formal antitrust complaint against the company with the regulators.

The complaint was quietly made on October 19, according to Bloomberg, which broke the story Tuesday. The EC says it is in the preliminary stages of examining it.

PSI has charged IBM with violating Article 82 of the EC Treaty by refusing to supply interface information on its mainframes and refusing to license its patents and z/OS operating system to third parties like it used to.

The complaint is a reflection of the massive antitrust suit PSI lodged in January in New York charging IBM with tying, monopoly maintenance, restraint of trade, denying access to an essential facility and myriad other forms of monopoly practices.

PSI countersued after IBM charged it with patent infringement and breach of contract, a suit IBM later amended with claims of "long-term, systematic theft of IBM's trade secrets, IBM's confidential documents, [and] IBM's copyrighted software."

IBM contends that what it insists on calling PSI's "emulators" couldn't exist without filching IBM's IP.

IBM's pat statement to press inquiring about the EC complaint reflects that suit in saying, "IBM will be bringing PSI's intellectual property violations to the attention of the commission as well, and is confident that the commission will protect IBM's property rights and reject PSI's claims."

As well as what wasn't in the script IBM corporate spokesman Fred McNeese was given to read.

Article 82, which deals with abuses by dominant companies that exclude competitors from the market, was used to nail Microsoft.

Mainframe reseller and PSI buddy T3 Technologies, which has a story of its own to tell about IBM shenanigans, has asked to join the PSI suit and used mainframe reseller QSGI recently blamed IBM for forcing it out of the business.