From...

by Linda Rosencrance

(IDG) -- The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) yesterday filed a lawsuit against Denver-based Accelr8 and three of its executives, claiming the company misrepresented the capabilities of its Navig8 2000 software.

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The lawsuit alleges that from 1997 through 1999, the firm made false statements about the use of the Y2K repair tool. The SEC alleges that although the software was created to analyze computer programs only for the Digital VAX/VMS system, the company claimed it would also work for IBM and Microsoft Corp. products.

The SEC also alleges that the executives filed false financial reports to the SEC for the one-year period ending in April 1999.

"This is an investigation we wrapped up very quickly, within a couple of months, because of our concerns with the Y2K problem," said Dan Shea, a spokesman at the Denver office of the SEC.

"The SEC's statements are libelous and I'm going to sue them," said Accelr8 CEO Thomas Geimer.

Geimer said his company recently sold $412,000 worth of Navig8 software to U.S. Department of Energy for use in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania to help those countries make their nuclear reactors Y2K-compliant. He said the software worked so well that Department of Energy called to thank the company for selling the department such a quality tool.

"If the Department of Energy is so happy, how can the SEC say we've misrepresented [the software]," Geimer said.

Tye Blackburn, Y2K technical integrator for Pacific Northwest National Laboratories in Washington state, which works with DOE, confirmed that the Navig8 software is being used to ensure that nuclear reactors in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania are Y2K-compliant

He said his company purchased the software at the request of officials in those countries after it was tested and found to work. He said the software didn't work initially but only because the information that had to be decoded by the software was written in the Cyrillic alphabet, instead of ASCII. The Russians had told Pacific Northwest that it was in ASCII. However, Blackburn said Accelr8 modified its software to read the Cyrillic alphabet and then it worked.