Jury deliberates on Novell v. Microsoft lawsuit

THE JURY is still deliberating to reach a verdict in an antitrust lawsuit filed by Novell against Microsoft, with a decision possibly due later today.

The lawsuit centres on allegations by Novell that Microsoft acted anti-competitively by asking it to develop a version of its word processor Wordperfect for the Windows 95 operating system and then making it impossible for Novell to meet that request to boost the market share of Microsoft Word.

Until the mid 1990s Novell's Wordperfect application was the dominant word processor, so it's not surprising that it is a little miffed that it lost out on the basis that Word had better integration with Windows 95. Microsoft, however, claims that Novell simply acted too late to develop a compatible version of Wordperfect and that was ultimately the cause of Novell's loss of market share, which fell from around 50 per cent to less than 10 per cent.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates took the witness stand to defend his company, claiming that Microsoft never acted in an anti-competitive manner, despite Novell having emails from Gates that show plans to make it harder if not impossible for rivals like Novell to compete.

The jury began its deliberations at 8:45am Wednesday morning and ended their discussions for the day at 7:45pm. They are to resume today, which could lead to a verdict, but given the complexity of the case it is possible that they will take another day or more to consider.

It appears that the jury has a tough decision on its hands. It sent five questions to US District Judge J. Frederick Motz, including one that appeared to confuse him so much that he told them to disregard it altogether, according to ABC News.

The eagerly awaited verdict could cost Microsoft upwards of $1.3bn if it loses. µ