Brussels, 09/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - The Commission has closed the investigation it opened into the Check Point Software Technologies. This Israeli software company was accused of anti-competitive practices by its Finnish competitor, Stones, which claimed that Check point was using exclusionary supply practices. The Commission has received assurances that Check Point will not use these techniques again. Israeli-based Check Point Software technologies Ltd is a major world-wide producer of firewall and virtual private network (VPN) software. Firewall/VPN software is used to prevent unauthorised external access to internal computer networks, and to provide data encryption in public computer networks. The Commission launched an investigation of Check Point's marketing practices following a complaint by Stonesoft, a Finnish software company, ahead of the launch in March 2001 of a competing firewall/VPN product. The Commission discovered that Check Point had told some of its distributors and resellers that if they attempted to sell Stonesoft's competing firewall/VPN product, they would no longer be supplied with Check Point's own product. Following negotiations between the Commission and Check Point, Check Point has offered an undertaking, which covers the Commission's concerns. The terms of the undertaking are as follows: 1) Check Point confirms that it will not place undue or unacceptable pressure upon its distributors and resellers regarding their independent decision whether or not to sell competing products; 2) Check Point will confirm to its distributors and resellers their right independently to choose to handle products of other manufacturers which directly or indirectly compete with Check Point's own products. Therefore, Check Point will inform all its distributors and resellers by letter that it will not condition the supply of its products, or the terms and conditions of supply of its products, on whether or not its distributors and resellers stock, market and sell competing products. A copy of this letter will be provided to Stonesoft; 3) Check Point will also ensure that its sales and other relevant personnel are informed about the EU competition rules and that they understand the requirement to comply with those laws in their business dealings. The Commission is satisfied with these commitments and Stonesoft has withdrawn its complaint and the case has been closed