Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Settles Minnesota Antitrust Suit
An anonymous reader writes "According to the Star Tribune: 'The Microsoft antitrust suit in Minnesota was settled out-of-court Monday seven weeks after it began, but before the plaintiffs even finished putting on their case before the jury. Terms of the settlement won't be disclosed until they are finalized and presented to a Hennepin County judge for preliminary approval 'in early summer,' Microsoft said in a statement. The antitrust suit in Hennepin Country District Court sought as much as half a billion dollars from Microsoft for alleged overcharges of more than 1 million Minnesota consumers and businesses who bought Microsoft Windows, Word or Excel software between 1994 and 2001.'"
Score one for the little guy? I doubt it.
MS should have been broken up like Ma Bell a long time ago.
Could be the state got overcharged, but there are enough other cases where it works the way I interpreted this one to ask anyway.
Until some court decides: "Fine $1, but clean up your act." Happened to restaurant company I won't name.
Seems like a bit of a stretch for a lawsuit to me. However, it must have gotten someone at Microsoft scared, else they wouldn't have settled it.
What we need is for the goverment to start seizing 10% of microsoft's assets a year until they change their ways.
Not enough to kill them off (which would be devastating, considering winXP would stop running), but enough to wake them up.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
Does that surprise you? If you can throw money at a problem and that costs you less than getting in the fight, that's what you should do, as a company. It's not like they're strapped for cash.
Besides, the plaintiff is under no obligation to take a settlement offer, so they must have found the terms acceptable based on their complaint.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
There was other software available. The desktop users may have not wanted to try and learn new/other software or had an IT dept. that was willing to administer multiple party apps., point being that we should learn to live with our decisions instead of suing over them... Something to think about.
Or maybe because they didn't want to go to court and have a long and drawn out case.
Yes, if they fought it they'd have a chance of winning, but by handing out settlements now and then they save time and money that can be used in fighting other cases, or just sat on.
No matter which option they choose, Microsoft has plenty of money to burn in such cases.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
I'm not the only one who immediately knew what the settlement terms are.
Free software for schools, and $5 dollars off your next X-box purchase.
And probably a few million for the cash-strapped state.
"Toss them a bone."
It works every time. And it's back to business as usually for our favorite megamonopoly.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
In all fairness to Ford, they were simply applying a straightforward economic risk assesment when they released the Pinto.
Evaluate your risk of harm, evaluate the cost of dealing with the results of the harm, and compare with the cost of
The only problem is that there's no law on the books to allow this kinda thing. What we need-ED was for the anti-trust trial do what it was supposed to do and break the company up like they did AT&T. There's still the "regulate-it-to-death" approach remaining: create an FTC-like oversight body for operating system software that would force MS to open up their software. This could create a market for resellers and even competing flavors of Windows. The only problem is that the OS business would become a tangled bureaucratic mess like the communications business now is.
Personally, I'd rather the govt keep MS's bundling activities in check and let the competition invade MS's core business horizontally, at least until some kind of a competitive balance is restored. Would MS kick and scream? Of course, this is a measure designed to reduce their market share, the exact opposite of their end-all-be-all goal.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
You're right. It does not specify that it will be paid in cash, but one would assume so for several reasons:
1. Other recent lawsuit actions. MS recently settled 2 other lawsuits for a total of 2.04 billion dollars [1.6 billion Sun, 440 million Intertrust]
2. Non-Cash Settlements have hurt MS. When MS settled with the DoJ and some states in November, provisions in the settlement prevented MS from engaging in exclusive contracts that would prohibit software developers or PC makers from using competing products [source - news.com].
3. Settlements with some states have been for software and like, but some [for example California which settled for 1.1 billion], the money is available to claim if you want (a cash settlement).
I would bet the settlement with be for a decent amount of cash, but you have to claim it and the unclaimed Cash goes back to MS [like California and Florida's settlements.
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
Where settlement, read 'Microsoft agrees to give away some of its products (which it will claim are worth a total of severl billion dollars when really its plastic and amounts to potential lost sales) to schools where it hopes to lock in students at an early age (i.e those lost sales are actually an investment at Microsofts advantage).' - for example whats better: give 10,000 copies of office to schools as part of a settlement, or give 10,000 copies of OpenOffice (essentially identical) to schools and Microsoft can give a sum of money to someone else?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I don't know about anyone else but I still have not received my CA settlement money. Paper work I sent in almost six months ago has not produced a check. I guess we have to bring up a lawsuit to get then to pay the money they already own us from the previous law suit.