Judge Tosses Part, Keeps Part Of Novell's Decade Old Anti-Trust Suit

from the bygones dept

Novell and Microsoft have always had a back and forth concerning anti-trust issues. Remember when Novell offered to pretend Microsoft was a friendly, non-monopolistic company if they agreed to play favorites with Novell software? Well, that never happened. Instead, Novell got a few hundred million in settling an anti-trust claim with Microsoft -- which they immediately followed up by suing the folks in Redmond for other anti-trust violations. That case is finally moving forward -- but only part of it. A judge has tossed out a bunch of claims claiming there's no evidence that Microsoft had a monopoly in its Office productivity software. However, the judge will let the charges concerning Microsoft leveraging its Windows monopoly to harm Novell's WordPerfect and Quattro Pro offerings. Of course, Novell no longer owns either program, having sold them nearly a decade ago -- but they're, of course, claiming that part of the reason they had to get out of the business was Microsoft crushing them. Microsoft's claim, which is probably backed up by the facts, is that both of those products were in decline long before Novell owned them -- and that Novell just hopped on the slide half-way down and took it almost to the bottom. That's not an issue with anti-trust violations, just incredibly bad business decision making. Actually, it seems odd that Novell even made the (now thrown out) charges that Microsoft had a monopoly in word processing and spread sheets -- as that would suggest their own offerings never had much of a chance, which would make you question why they bought into the business in the first place?