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Actually, the depositions will occur at law offices near the headquarters of the companies in question. Microsoft's, for instance, will occur in Seattle.

my guess is Preston, Gates, Ellis LLP ..
I suspect they still have some clout there

Are you sure you didn't mean "hand job?"

The club wasn't at all some fanboy club for Apple, as you seem to suggest. Rather, it was a pre-law club.

Our president (at the time)

YHBT. YHL.

Don't you get it? He intentionally picked the stupidest name possible to get flamebots like you to suggest 'cockbot'.

It's like showing you this guy and making the joke that he is probably really good at banning gas.

The "Gates" in the name of this firm is not the "Gates" of Microsoft. William H. Gates

On an unrelated note, Preston Gates' IIS seems to be slashdotted now. I was surprised to see that the BSA is using Apache on FreeBSD. It seems to be working fine, if a little slow.

http://www.prestongates.com/meetpge/wGates.asp

How many cases do you want? One? Two? Three? A Google search for "shrink-wrap license court case" turns up these and others; judging from that, more shrink-wrap licenses have been upheld than overturned.

You might argue that some or all of those cases gave "no extra rights" to the licensee. Since you did not specify "extra rights" beyond anything in particular, I assume you wanted wiggle room to squirm out of concrete examples.

Several causes suggest themselves:

• BillG was being prophetic :-)

  Nope - don't believe a word of that!

• BillG's opinions at that time, have become the prevailing legal opinions due to the influence of Microsoft.

  I'd judge this to be partly true; it could be argued that one of the few true Microsoft innovations is the outgrowth of shrinkwrapped software licensing as we know it today. (I'm not saying that it is an unalloyed benefit; merely that it is a result of their activities.)

  ...But this is not a complete picture. It doesn't provide any reason, outside of BillG's stridency, for his views to have prevailed.

  We have to head on to...

• William H. Gates III's views, in 1980, were, with little doubt, informed by the fact that his father, William H. Gates Jr, was an intellectual property lawyer.

  The Official W. H. Gates III bio provides a little indication of this; How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates describes it in more detail as does E-Mail from Bill.

  The point here is that it is manifestly clear that "Trey's" positions are informed by the fact that his father was a corporate lawyer, one of the founders of Preston Gates & Ellis, LLP.

  Many high tech companies have tended to have a hate-hate relationship with lawyers; I don't think it is any coincidence that Microsoft has had huge legal successes in the past when involvement with law was to some degree pervasive in the young Gate's life.