Business Notes SOFTWARE

If a car can be repossessed, why not computer software? The Silicon Valley firm Logisticon, which has been locked in a dispute with Revlon over a $180,000 bill and licensing rights for custom software, decided that the cosmetics company should not use what it had not paid for. Without letting Revlon know in advance, Logisticon programmers used a telephone connection earlier this month to enter Revlon computers and disable the disputed software. The message got through. For three days, Revlon claims, hundreds of workers sat idle as two warehouses were unable to ship as much as $60 million in goods. "Software companies have to protect themselves," says Logisticon president Don Gallagher. Revlon says it refuses to pay because the program has failed to perform as promised. The company sued Logisticon last week in California state court for trespassing and breach of contract, calling the repossession "a form of commercial terrorism."