Novell v. Microsoft Trial Continues

A long-running lawsuit by Novell against Microsoft enters a new phase before a jury in the U.S. District Court for Utah in Salt Lake City. The lawsuit is continuing even though Microsoft facilitated the US$2.2 billion Apr. 2011 purchase of Novell by Attachmate and obtained some of Novell’s intellectual property in the process.

The lawsuit originated in 2004, with Novell alleging that Microsoft engaged in anticompetitive actions by withholding information about Windows programming interfaces to ensure that Word and Office would stay ahead of WordPerfect. Novell had acquired the word-processing application from the WordPerfect Corporation, along with the Quattro Pro spreadsheet application from Borland, and subsequently sold both products to Corel. Microsoft contends that any harm was mostly self-inflicted, caused by Novell’s own decisions to buy WordPerfect and then sell it only about a year and a half later.

In Apr. 2005, the case was moved to the U.S. District Court of Maryland, where other competitors’ antitrust claims against Microsoft had been heard. In June 2005, the U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz ruled against several of Novell’s claims and ruled that Novell could not argue that Microsoft possessed a monopoly in desktop productivity applications. However, Judge Motz allowed two of Novell’s claims to move forward, and he will preside over the Salt Lake City trial. Microsoft’s former CEO Bill Gates is scheduled to testify at the trial.