EasyJet, Europe's leading low-cost airline, today announced the filing of a lawsuit in the United States to prevent Navitaire, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Accenture Ltd, from blocking the US distribution of software that runs easyJet's widely-acclaimed computer reservation system.

The lawsuit was filed by BulletProof Technologies, the Los Angeles-based company that developed the software. easyJet is not a named party in the case.

The complaint was filed in response to claims being pursued by Navitaire in the UK courts that the BulletProof reservation system, designed for easyJet, infringed UK copyrights held by Navitaire. The BulletProof complaint seeks clearance to license the new reservation system in the US to hotels, cruise lines, and airlines without the interference of US copyright claims from Navitaire.

Navitaire, a US company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is a provider of computer reservation system software (known as �OpenRes�) to a number of low-cost airlines.

The US complaint raises issues about Navitaire's relationships with its customers and the quality of its product.

According to the complaint, at least as early as 1999, "Navitaire began to acquire a reputation among its customers, and in the airline business community more generally, for the poor quality of its products, for its unresponsiveness to the needs of its customers, and for the inadequate resources it devoted to the development and maintenance of its technology."

The complaint alleges that �within the last couple of years, at least one of Navitaire�s customers terminated its relationship with Navitaire citing the unacceptably slow operation of Navitaire�s product and the difficulties experienced by travel agents in using that product.�

The complaint chronicles problems easyJet claims to have had with the Navitaire product, culminating in easyJet's termination of its business relationship with Navitaire in 2001 and its move to the BulletProof system.

According to the complaint, the BulletProof system has been an "enormous commercial and technological success" for easyJet. Potential customers, including the national museum of the Netherlands (the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam) have contacted Bulletproof, attempting to engage the company's services, but those engagements have stalled because of Navitaire's claims.

Mike Cooper, easyJet Commercial Director, said:

�Our reservation system has been a major source of differentiation from our competitors. It has also provided great benefits for our customers and US companies could also benefit from BulletProof's product - provided that Bulletproof is free to sub-licence it.

�The US courts have had much greater experience of these cases and we are confident that the US court will rule swiftly that the BulletProof product does not infringe any Navitaire copyright. The case being bought by Navitaire in the UK is a complete nonsense motivated purely by commercial jealousy.

ENDS

Contact

Toby Nicol, easyJet +44 (0) 7788 190096

easyJet is a low-cost airline based in Luton, near London, England. The company was founded in November 1995 by a Greek entrepreneur, Stelios Haji-Ioannaou, with two leased aircraft and two routes (from London to Edinburgh and Glasgow). By mid-2002, easyJet had become the largest low-cost airline in Europe (by acquiring its rival, Go Fly) and now operates 105 routes with 69 aircraft. It expects to carry over 20 million passengers this year. The airline is listed on the London Stock Exchange.