Microsoft Ends Decade of US Antitrust Litigation
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Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Monday it had agreed to settle antitrust lawsuits with Novell Inc. (NOVL.
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After two weeks of almost incessant bad news for Microsoft comes a ray of hope, courtesy of US District Court in San Diego: Judge Rudi Brewster has dismissed a series of patent infringement claims against Microsoft regarding technology Bell Laboratories developed for converting text into speech, in a summary judgment this afternoon.
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The European Court of First Instance has set a date of September 17 to rule on Microsoft's appeal of a 2004 antitrust verdict that forced it to pay over $600 million in fines and make changes to its Windows operating systems. Microsoft has maintained it did nothing anti-competitive.
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A European Union court on Monday dismissed Microsoft Corp.'s appeal against an EU antitrust order that ordered it to share communications code with rivals and sell a copy of Windows without Media Player.
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Microsoft Corp ended three years of resistance on Monday, finally agreeing to comply with a landmark 2004 antitrust decision by the European Commission.
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(InfoWorld) - The 2002 antitrust settlement between Microsoft and the U.S. government has yielded several benefits for consumers with competing Web browsers, multimedia applications, and Web-based services flourishing since the agreement, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday. The DOJ, in an 11-page report, said the settlement seems to be working, despite questions from critics. "There have been a number of developments in the competitive landscape ... that suggest that the Final Judgments are accomplishing their stated goal of fostering competitive conditions among middleware products, unimpeded by anticompetitive exclusionary obstacles erected by Microsoft," said the report, from the DOJ and the group of states led by New York that sued the company. Among the DOJ's evidence that the settlement is working: Increased competition to Internet Explorer from other Web browsers, such as Firefox and Opera; the popularity of Apple's iTunes and QuickTime and Adobe's Flash for handling multimedia content; the increasing use of Web-based services for e-mail and other applications; and the decisions by hardware vendors like DellÂ to offer Linux preloaded on their computers. Apple introduced QuickTime in 1991, long before the antitrust lawsuit. Hardware vendors have been preloading Linux on computers dating back to the late '90s. "To be sure, none of the products mentioned ... have to date resulted in a dramatic reduction in Microsoft's PC operation system market share," the DOJ report said. "The Final Judgements were targeted to reinvigorating competitive conditions that Microsoft had suppressed, not to slicing off some part of Windows' market share." Microsoft, in a statement, said the judgment has fostered competition. The judgment "defined clear rules for how Microsoft competes without preordaining winners in the technology marketplace," Brad Smith, Microsoft's senior vice president and general counsel, said in the statement. "The [judgment] shaped how we view our responsibilities and led us to adopt a set of voluntary principles that will continue to apply even after major parts of the U.S. antitrust ruling expire this November." The judgment and competitive principles Microsoft has adopted "provide the industry and consumers with the benefits of ongoing innovation by Microsoft, while creating and preserving robust opportunities for competition," Smith added. Microsoft, in its own antitrust status report issued Thursday, said competing middleware products continue to "proliferate." Seven top PC makers preinstall an average of 35 non-Microsoft software products before shipping them out, the Microsoft report said. Other groups have questioned the benefits of the settlement. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, has at times questioned the benefits, even though she approved the judgment. In a hearing in February 2005, Kollar-Kotelly questioned "what, if any, effect" the judgment has had on the software market. Another group of states led by California that also sued Microsoft and has been critical of the judgment is scheduled to release its own report by Friday. A status report on Microsoft's antitrust compliance is scheduled before Kollar-Kotelly on Sept. 11.
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THE RULING: Microsoft Corp. lost an appeal at the European Union's Court of First Instance to get a landmark 2004 antitrust ruling and record 497 million euro ($613 million) fine overturned.
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Microsoft has taken another huge step in what has become a US$3 billion-plus campaign to rid itself of the legal fallout of its 2002 settlement of an antitrust case brought by the US government.
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Microsoft suffered a decisive antitrust defeat on Monday when a European Union court upheld a landmark ruling that the world's largest software maker had abused its dominant market position to crush rivals.
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The U.S. Department of Justice said it will not seek to extend the restrictions placed on Microsoft&#39;s business practices following its antitrust settlement with the U.S. government in 2002.Many of the restrictions are due to expire Nov. 12, and last week several&#160;U.S. states filed motions&#160;in favor of extending them for a further five years. Four of those states -- New York, Maryland, Louisiana and Florida -- had previously said they opposed an extension.The DOJ had also opposed the extension, and on Friday it made it clear that it would not be making a turnabout like the four U.S. states.&quot;The United States will not file a motion to extend its Final Judgment as it does not believe that the standard for such an extension has been met,&quot; the DOJ said in a court filing with the U.S. District Court, District of Columbia.The restrictions were part of the 2002 &quot;consent decree&quot; that settled the U.S. government&#39;s case against Microsoft. They prohibit Microsoft from retaliating against PC makers that install its competitors&#39; software, or licensing its software to them on unequal terms.Another requirement -- that Microsoft license its APIs (application programming interfaces) to let rival products interoperate with Windows -- has already been extended for two years.The DOJ didn&#39;t explain its decision Friday. In August it said it felt the&#160;judgment had been successful&#160;in preventing Microsoft from continuing its exclusionary behavior.The&#160;states who favor an extension&#160;disagree. They say operating systems haven&#39;t evolved as quickly as people thought they would in 2002, and that Microsoft could still use the dominance of Internet Explorer to choke competitors in the emerging Web 2.0 world.A status hearing that will likely address extending the restrictions is scheduled for Nov. 6 with District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.The other states pushing for an extension are California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia.Separately, last month the&#160;DOJ raised hackles in Europe&#160;by criticizing the European Union&#39;s decision to reject Microsoft&#39;s appeal of its antitrust decision there.&#160;
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Microsoft Corp  ended three years of resistance on Monday and finally agreed to comply with a landmark 2004 antitrust decision by the European Commission.
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By Bill Husted, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution  Sep. 20--For the third time since June, Microsoft has filed lawsuits  against small metro area firms as it attempts to crack down on the sale of  unlicensed or counterfeit versions of its software.
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The 2002 antitrust settlement between Microsoft Corp. and the U.S. government has yielded several benefits for ...
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An eight-year court battle between Microsoft and Eolas Technologies has come to an end. The software giant settled with Eolas for an undisclosed amount to put the case in the annals of intellectual property war history.
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BRUSSELS - Microsoft Corp. dropped a nearly decadelong legal battle with European regulators yesterday, agreeing to key parts of an antitrust ruling that has already led to hundreds of millions in fines.
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Microsoft said yesterday that it had finally laid to rest the anti-trust case against it in the United States when it reached an agreement with the Computer &amp; Communications Industry Association, the final group seeking to overturn itssettlement with the
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A European court dismisses Microsoft's appeal in a long-running competition dispute.