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Bill Gates to Testify in Utah Lawsuit

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Bill GatesBill Gates, the Chairman of Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT), is set to testify in anUtah lawsuit, a billion dollar antitrust lawsuit that was filed against the software manufacturer in 2004 by Novell Inc.

This lawsuit was filed against Microsoft alleging that the company duped its competitor in violation of the federal law. The case has been ongoing at the federal court in Salt Lake City for a month.

 


Novell Inc., the Utah based tech company, alleges that Microsoft duped the software maker by making it believe that its WordPerfect writing application would be launched along with the Windows 95 rollout. However, later on Novell was forced to sell its writing application resulting in a $1.2 billion loss for the company, said Novell.

With a testimony from Bill gates, Microsoft’s lawyers on Monday will open the case. Lawyers say that Gates will testify that Microsoft dumped the WordPerfect application as it was a threat to Windows 95, anticipating a crash to the operating system and also the application would have not been compatible with other future versions.

In the complaint filed in 2004, Novell said that Microsoft unlawfully restricted competition by its WordPerfect application. Novell’s lawyers claimed that Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, said Microsoft without anticompetitive conducts could not compete.

The United States court of appeals in Richmond, Virginia, revived the case in May which a lower court judge had dismissed. Novell was ruled by the appeals court, Novell for a short time in mid 199s had owned the application WordPerfect. It did not cede its rights when the company transferred products linked to PC operating systems in 1996 to Caldera.

This ruling resulted in sending the case back to J. Frederick Motz, United States District Judge Baltimore, who had originally tossed the case. The trail of the case is conducted by Motz at the federal court in Salt Lake, where the lawsuit was first originally filed.

Attachmate Corp, Seattle based conglomerate that acquired Novell in April this year, is fighting against Microsoft. It has argued that the users of WordPerfect dropped to less than 10 percent in 1996 from nearly 50 percent in the year 1990.

Novell, which is seeking three times its losses in the lawsuit, said that its value dropped from $1.2 billion in May to $170 million when it was sold to Corel Corp in 1996. Novell in its complaint says that in the global market WordPerfect has been the most popular word application.

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edliston
Post Written By: Ed Liston

Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.


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Ed Liston

Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing.

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