WASHINGTON -- The United States Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday it settled antitrust charges against MSC Software Corp. that stemmed from the company's acquisition of two competitors in 1999.

The FTC said MSC agreed to divest a "clone" copy of its Nastran simulation software to resolve allegations that it illegally monopolized the market.

MSC will divest the software by issuing royalty-free licenses to one or two other companies, subject to FTC approval, the agency said.

The software at issue, called Nastran, is used to simulate how product designs respond to real-world conditions. It is widely used in the aerospace and automotive industries and allows manufacturers to improve designs and get products to market faster.

MSC is the dominant supplier of Nastran and had overall revenue of $236 million last year, the FTC said. The company issued a statement saying it had not admitted any wrongdoing and did not expect the settlement to have any material adverse impact on its business.

"Our business strategy remains strong and we continue to provide leadership in the computer-aided engineering marketplace," MSC chairman Frank Perna said in a statement.

------- Market Monopoly? ---------- FTC officials charged in October that MSC had violated U.S. antitrust laws by acquiring two other companies in the simulation software business, Universal Analytics Inc. and Computerized Structural Analysis & Research Corp.

MSC had a 90 percent share of the market for Nastran applications at the time it bought those two companies, each of which had a share of about 5 percent of the market.

The agency said the deals had given MSC a monopoly in the market by eliminating its only two competitors.

Under the settlement announced on Wednesday, the agency said, MSC will have 150 days to grant other companies licenses for its advanced Nastran software, including the source code for the software.

MSC said last month that it had reached a tentative settlement with the FTC, but did not disclose details of the agreement.