The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple - Oscar Wilde
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Novell wins appeal against Microsoft over Wordperfect
SOFTWARE HOUSE Novell has managed to get a decision overturned its antitrust case against Microsoft regarding Wordperfect.
Novell filed a lawsuit against Microsoft back in 2004 alleging that Microsoft had engaged in anticompetitive practices to undermined its once market leading Wordperfect application. Before Microsoft's Word took over the market, Wordperfect, which was briefly owned by Novell, was the most popular word processing application.
By 1996, Wordperfect's marketshare had dropped to just 10 per cent from over 50 per cent in 1990. That in turn caused the application's value to drop from $1.2bn in May 1994 to just $170m when Novell sold Wordperfect to Corel in 1996.
It's not surprising then that Novell wants to recoup its loses from Microsoft, not just once but three times over. So the 2-1 decision against Microsoft by a US appeals court in Virginia means that Microsoft might have to pay out once more to Novell for its past anti-competitive practices.
Microsoft told Bloomberg that the company believes Novell's case doesn't have a leg to stand on. "We are disappointed with the Fourth's Circuit's decision to reverse in part the district court's summary judgment ruling which dismissed these very old claims, although we are pleased that at this point only one part of one of Novell's claims remains."
Novell didn't comment, but we think it's safe to say that it doesn't agree. Now it can take Microsoft to trial and try to recoup what it believes was unfairly taken away from it long ago.
Even though Microsoft could end up paying billions in damages to Novell, given the amount of money Microsoft rakes in from the Office suite of applications, a decision against it is unlikely to dissuade it from anti-competitive practices in the future. µ
Tags: Microsoft
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Microsoft, anti-competitive? Hmmm. I still remember, "The job's not done until Lotus won't run."
Anyone who lived and worked thru that period of time and used a product other than M$-W0RD knows how much better the document software from Novell and Ami-Pro was at the time. I fondly recall every time a new version of LoseDoze came out the software was mysteriously "broken" and non-functional.
I don't think there is any question about the history, the only question is whether they can be held accountable for their actions. Of course you have to convince a jury full of dolts and a judge who probably cannot set a digital watch and no absolutely nothing about tech, but thems the breaks.
When the PC made the transition to Windows from DOS, Microsoft kept vital operating system hooks secret from competitors.
Competitors had to work around the limitations for their releases, or wait until Microsoft released something that could be analyzed to see what OS hooks it was using.
Wordperfect for DOS was a very effective wordprocessor. The macro language trapped keystrokes, so could be used to reformat documents in sophisticated ways that are not anywhere as easy to do in Winword. Winword traps actions, not keystrokes, so when the macro is run on a different document, it plays back text copied from the document where the macro was written, not the text that should have been caught by the keystrokes.
This, and hundreds of other stupid design flaws make Winword a horrible kludge, but one we are stuck with because Microsoft kept the price of Office at $100 for several years until Wordperfect fell way too far behind to ever catch up.
It was pretty good. Wierdly though it just seemed to 'rest on its laurels'. Frankly the only people responsible for wordperfect losing market share is novel or whoever was supposedly developing it at the time.. It just seemed to go from being 'ahead of the crowd' to being behind the times... Oh well, I'm sure that naughty microsoft must have had spies or something...
Word perfect could be had for a few bucks and not a few hundred bucks for MS.
The world of computers wold be much better off without MS and I hope Novell wins and kick butt.
I agree with the ending remark that given the extreme success of the Office Suite the reparations that Novell is seeking will hardly change the way Microsoft does business. However hopefully the courts will also realize that fact, and will opt to fine Microsoft a hefty amount punitively as well so that maybe, just maybe, others won't see these kinds of tactics as viable business decisions. It's unlikely, but I can hope!