Microsoft settles antitrust differences with CCIA and Novell
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Microsoft Corp has settled antitrust differences with the Computer &amp; Communications Industry Association and Novell Inc, clearing the way for its appeal against the European Commission&#39;s antitrust commission.
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Details of the Microsoft-Novell Linux deal inked last November became public this week as the Linux vendor filed its annual report and SEC 10K documents. The filings offer access to the agreement Novell signed with Microsoft to distribute SuSE Linux without any risk of Microsoft patent claims.
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Novell Inc. NOVL.O on Monday said it  had reached a settlement with software maker Microsoft Corp.  MSFT.O over antitrust issues in which Microsoft will pay it  $536 million in cash, sending Novell shares 11 percent higher  in pre-market trading.
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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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(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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â¢ 2004-11-09 â¢ Microsoft has recently said that it had finally laid to rest the anti-trust case against it in the US, when it reached an agreement with the Computer &amp; Communications Industry Association (CCIA), the final group seeking to overturn its
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Microsoft settled with Novell for $536 million. Novell also intends to file a new suit againt Microsoft regrading word-processing software.
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Novell has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, accusing it of unfairly eliminating competition for office productivity applications at the time Novell owned the WordPerfect and Quattro Pro applications.
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Novell Inc. today said it has reached a $536 million settlement with Microsoft over antitrust issues related to Novell's NetWare network operating software.
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Microsoft has made substantial concessions to the European Commission, finally bringing the company into compliance with a&#160;2004 antitrust ruling, the Commission said Monday.&quot;Microsoft has finally agreed to three substantial changes to bring them into compliance with the decision,&quot; the Commission said in a statement.Following the 2004 ruling, Microsoft paid a fine of &#8364;497 million (around $600 million) and published a version of its Windows XP operating system without a bundled media player. The Commission also ordered a third remedy, that Microsoft publish details of the communications protocols used by its server operating system products to communicate with one another and with its desktop clients.The Commission was initially&#160;unhappy with Microsoft&#39;s response&#160;to the third remedy, fining it an additional &#8364;280.5 million last year, but has now reached agreement with the company. One of the sticking points was how open source software developers could make use of the communications protocol information Microsoft published.The first change the company has agreed to is that open source software developers will be able to access and use the interoperability information, as required in the 2004 ruling.Second, the royalties payable for this information will be reduced to a nominal one-off payment of &#8364;10,000 and third, the royalties for a worldwide license, including patents, will be sharply reduced, the Commission said.
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Novell has settled its long-standing NetWare anti-trust claim with Microsoft - to the tune of $536 - but in the same announcement reveals plans to launch a second claim relating to WordPerfect.
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SEATTLE -- Microsoft Corp.'s $6 billion acquisition of online advertising group aQuantive Inc. has cleared an antitrust regulatory hurdle, the companies said Friday.
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Engadget.com has resolved a dispute with the software giant over proprietary content.
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Microsoft Corp. and Eolas Technologies Inc. have settled their long-running legal battle, according to a letter sent to Eolas shareholders.
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SEATTLE/NEW YORK  - Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O said  on Monday said it will pay $536 million to its smaller rival  Novell Inc. NOVL.O to settle an antitrust suit and resolved a  10-year dispute with a computer trade group.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft's Windows Vista OS doesn't pose antitrust issues so far, according to the latest status report on Microsoft's compliance with the U.S. antitrust settlement. The company has addressed all of the bugs identified relating to how third-party middleware software interacts with Vista, according to the report, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. Microsoft has increased its cooperation with the court's technical committee in several ways to help ensure that middleware vendors have their software ready for Vista before the OS ships, the report said. The document defines middleware as software programs such as instant messaging programs, media players, e-mail clients, and Internet browsers. Around 30 vendors are working with regulators and Microsoft on how their software works with Vista, the report said. The U.S. government and states that were a party to the antitrust suit against Microsoft have conducted "extensive testing" of interim builds of Vista and Internet Explorer 7 to ensure compliance with the November 2002 antitrust settlement, the report said. As part of that settlement, Microsoft agreed to license communication protocols to IT vendors interested in developing server software that works smoothly with its Windows operating system. After complaints, Microsoft is rewriting some of the technical documentation for its Microsoft Communications Protocol Program (MCPP). The status report said Microsoft has made the new documentation easier to understand, but the company needs to stay on schedule for delivering further documents. Microsoft has until November 2009 to provide the information. The European Commission has also beenÂ scrutinizing Vista, following its 2004 antitrust ruling against Microsoft. So far, the Commission has taken no action against Vista. Microsoft has warned that if regulatory interference delays Vista's European launch, it couldÂ hurt Europe's economy. Microsoft plans to release Vista to business customers on Nov. 30. In 2004, the CommissionÂ fined Microsoft â¬497 millionÂ ($613 million at the time) for abusing its monopoly in the desktop OS market, ordered it to release a version of Windows XP without Windows Media Player software, and mandated it to license and document protocols used by its server products. Microsoft is appealing the decision before the European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg.
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The latest status report on Microsoft Corp.'s compliance with an antitrust settlement in the U.S. has cleared the company of a separate accusation of not complying with orders to disclose information to make its products more interoperable.