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US Supreme Court Won't Hear Microsoft's Novell Appeal |
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Microsoft was trying to get the four-year-old suit
quashed on the theory that Novell didn't compete in the operating
systems market in the mid-90s and so couldn't have been hurt.
Both a district court and an appeals court had disagreed and waved the
litigation ahead. Microsoft claims their decision expands the scope of
the antitrust laws.
Novell acquired the word processor when it bought WordPerfect in 1994.
At the same time it bought the QuattroPro spreadsheet from Borland and
pushed them together in a suite. It sold the software to Coral two
years later.
In 1994 WordPerfect was valued at $1.2 billion. It went to Coral for $170 million. Novell wants three times the difference.
Microsoft blames Novell's own mismanagement. Novell claims Microsoft
didn't provide it with the information about the operating system that
WordPerfect needed to compete against Office and has damning Microsoft
e-mail supporting its contention.
The Novell suit is the last of the private antitrust actions filed
against Microsoft by such as Sun, Tim Warner and RealNetworks after
Microsoft lost the suit the government filed. Settling those claims has
cost Microsoft something like $5 billion. |
The US Supreme Court has refused to hear Microsoft's appeal of Novell's multibillion-dollar antitrust suit against it. The news hit just as Novell's annual BrainShare user conference was
getting starting. Basically a private replay of the Justice
Department's suit against Microsoft, the case involves Novell's claims
that Microsoft targeted WordPerfect and QuattroPro to protect its
operating system monopoly.