A decade of private antitrust lawsuits for Microsoft Corp. came to a quiet end on Tuesday when a federal judge in Maryland granted Microsoft’s motion for summary judgment and dismissed the last pending suit against the software giant that followed the government’s landmark monopolization case.
David Tulchin (Sullivan & Cromwell)
Around 200 cases followed the 1999 ruling in U.S. v Microsoft that found that Microsoft used its dominance in the operating system market to crush potential rivals.
Microsoft’s general in the battle against the private suits, Sullivan & Cromwell’s David Tulchin, sounded a note of relief as he traveled back to New York from a Philadelphia hearing Wednesday morning.
“It has been a long time,” Tulchin said. “Sometimes the legal system moves a little more slowly than we would like, but all things good and bad must come to an end, and it’s time for this to be over.”
Tulchin reminisced about the good: a half-dozen arguments in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, another half dozen in state supreme courts, two state court trials, visits to 40 states and a goldmine of unused frequent flier miles.
He also reflected on the not so good: “I thought we’d probably be done with it within five or so years,” he said.
The suit dismissed on Tuesday was brought by software maker Novell Inc. in November 2004 and involved the word-processing program WordPerfect. Novell acquired the software in 1994 and sold it, at a significant loss, two years later.
In its complaint, Novell accused Microsoft of using its monopoly in the operating system market to hurt WordPerfect and promote its own word-processing software, Microsoft Word. One Microsoft executive told investor Warren Buffet, according to the ruling, “[i]f we own the key ‘franchises’ built on top of the operating system, we dramatically widen the ‘moat’ that protects the operating system”.
In dismissing the case, Judge J. Frederick Motz, of the U.S. District Court for Maryland, said when Novell sold WordPerfect and other products, it also sold the right to any claims on them.
The case took so long to resolve, in part because it was filed several years after most of the others. In 2004, Microsoft and Novell announced a $536 million settlement to resolve some disputes, but couldn’t come to an agreement on the WordPerfect claims.
In his ruling, Motz said: “I find that Novell no longer owns the claims and may not pursue them here.” He also explained how he would rule on the merits of the claims if the 4th Circuit overturned his decision. Of the two remaining counts, one would survive Microsoft’s motion for summary judgment while the other would not, he said.
Novell lawyer R. Bruce Holcomb who is a partner at his own firm Adams Holcomb, did not immediately return a call seeking comment, but did tell Main Justice in an interview last week: ”It has been going on for years, somebody has to be the last.”
That company was asking for hundreds of millions in damages, Tulchin said. After a seven-week trial, the jury returned a verdict of $1 and sided with Microsoft on all the antitrust claims. “That was a great victory,” he said.
Tulchin said that he has visited every state but one — Arkansas — thanks in large part to his work for Microsoft.
“I have to go to Memphis in a month,” he said. “I will walk across the bridge” to Arkansas.
The state of Wisconsin also announced on Tuesday it was collecting $80 million to purchase technology for low-income schools as part of its own 2006 settlement with Microsoft that resolved a related antitrust lawsuit.
[...] was also some coverage that wasn’t biased in Microsoft’s favour (in advance) [1, 2], but it was easily outnumbered. A lot of the press is occupied by Microsoft sympathisers, even [...]