DoJ Settlement Upheld and Other Legal News

Antitrust litigation against Microsoft in the United States appears to be winding down, with the rejection of a challenge to Microsoft’s settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and the settlement of several more class-action antitrust suits brought by American consumers. However, antitrust and unfair competition litigation remains more troublesome overseas, where Microsoft is appealing orders by the European Commission and the Japanese Fair Trade Commission and faces a new private antitrust lawsuit in South Korea.

In other legal news, the United States Patent and Trademark Office has agreed to reexamine a Microsoft patent on the File Allocation Table (FAT) disk formatting system granted in Dec. 2003, but this investigation should not have any short-term effect on Microsoft’s patent licensing program for the FAT.

Antitrust in the U.S.

The following antitrust cases in the United States were resolved in June and July 2004:

DoJ settlement upheld. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled unanimously (6-0) that Microsoft’s antitrust settlement with the DoJ and 18 states is in the best interest of consumers and upheld the settlement in full. In an 83-page decision filed on June 30, 2004, the court rejected appeals from the state of Massachusetts and two trade organizations, the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA), which argued that the settlement does not do enough to curb Microsoft’s anticompetitive behavior.