By Matt Rosoff [bio]
Posted: Nov. 20, 2006

The following is a sidebar accompanying an article published by Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm focused exclusively on Microsoft strategy & technology. More samples of our content, as well as a list of upcoming articles and reports are also available.

In Nov. 2004, Microsoft paid Novell US$536 million to resolve antitrust claims involving Windows and Netware, Novell's networking technology. (Details of that settlement were not made public because the case never went to trial.) As part of that settlement, Novell also agreed to withdraw from the European Commission's antitrust investigation against Microsoft.

Days later, Novell filed a new antitrust lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Utah. This suit alleged that Microsoft withheld information about Windows from Novell in an effort to ensure that Office would stay ahead of WordPerfect, a word-processing application that Novell acquired from the WordPerfect Corporation, and QuattroPro, a spreadsheet application acquired from Borland. Novell paid approximately US$860 million to acquire both products in June 1994 and sold them to Corel in Mar. 1996 for US$170 million.

In Apr. 2005, the case was moved to the U.S. District Court of Maryland, where other private antitrust claims against Microsoft (including claims from AOL, Be, RealNetworks, and Sun Microsystems) have been heard. In June 2005, the judge hearing the case threw out four of Novell's six claims and ruled that Novell could not argue that Microsoft possessed a monopoly in desktop productivity applications. However, the judge allowed two other claims to move forward. The case is still pending.