Get that man out of my building
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Microsoft calls for an ITC investigation of a British company
GAMES CONSOLE SELLER Microsoft appears to be a bit miffed with an outfit called Datel Design & Development.
The Vole has complained in the strongest possible terms to the US International Trade Commission that Datel Design has be doing some terrible things and has called for an immediate investigation.
According to Microsoft, Datel has been violating its patents and stealing its ideas. It also seems that there is a history of bad blood between the two companies.
Last year a California court gave Datel Design the green light to pursue five of the six antitrust claims it filed against Microsoft over its recent locking-out of third-party Xbox 360 accessories.
Datel is an English company that flogs third-party memory cards and controllers for the Xbox 360. It sued the Vole after an October 2009 firmware update made its accessories incompatible with the popular video game console.
Microsoft claimed that it was a side effect of a crackdown on Xbox Live cheaters.
The Vole initially tried to get the case chucked out but was a little embarrassed when the judge upheld many of Datel's antitrust claims against it.
Microsoft claimed that gamers agree to not use third-party accessories when they buy an Xbox 360 and receive their contract and warranty. µ
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This is scary.
Lets take a made-up scenario. Say you were going to buy a car from a car manufacturer X. Say you had to sign an agreement to purchase the car that stated "agree to not use third-party accessories" (I quote from the article). So, you now own a car, but you're not allowed to use third party oil filters, parts, cd player, alloy wheels, body kits. You now have to buy the original manufacturers high priced versions only. Do you like the sound of that?
As consumers of gaming products we should all be scared of how this turns out. The console manufacturers already get away with a lot using "communications" chips that happen to employ encryption that make it near impossible for third parties to manufacture addons like memory cards, joysticks, or anything else that plugs into the console. Much the same way printer manufacturers use "chips" in their printer cartridges in an attempt to stop you buying third party printer cartridges.
Do you like set prices for your addons like $40 for a 512Mb memory card when you know a 512Mb memory card should be less than $10? A 120gb hard disk for $100+ when you can buy a 512gb for $60?
Just ask a hundred gamers whether they *did* in fact agree to that condition - or whether (for example) they just clicked OK on the whole "agreement" without reading it, or assumed that it was unenforcable.
Apropos which, I must say that basing your case on an unfair contract term seems like a poor strategy. But then IANAL, so what do I know?