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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.'"
What is Minnesota running out of money just like the EU? So they try to hit up the cash cow, I think we will see more and more of these suits comming out, and all that it is going to do is make it so generic that they will get thrown out on the spot.
Or else Minnesota may have sent Brock Lesnar and Jesse Ventura after them. They could easily beat Gates and Ballmer in a tag match.
Just throw money at every piece of litigation they are in? Are they trying to artificially boost their public perception by being in as little lawsuits as possible?
....move along....nothing to see here....
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- Jax
Score one for the little guy? I doubt it.
MS should have been broken up like Ma Bell a long time ago.
Microsoft are like that car company (Ford???) who decided it was cheaper to compensate burn sufferers and the bereaved than fix the gaping flaw that made their fuel tanks tend to catch fire.
Microsoft can pay fines out of their petty cash, while perpetrating similar tricks over and over.
#define struct union
"Free" copies of WindowsXP? "Free" copies of MS-Word? a $4 coupon off your next purchase of $600 software? MS is just extending their monopoly, probably dangling a carrot in front of the schools, after all, who can fault them if its 'for the kids' ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Could be the state got overcharged, but there are enough other cases where it works the way I interpreted this one to ask anyway.
What we need is for the goverment to start seizing 10% of microsoft's assets a year until they change their ways.
Not enough to kill them off (which would be devastating, considering winXP would stop running), but enough to wake them up.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
If so, I can see why M$ would settle.
A win against them in court by the state would make it a lot easier for a class-action suit to also win, setting even further precedent in other states.
Microsoft is going full throttle to settle all outstanding lawsuits. It wouldn't do to have a bunch of outstanding legal battles while you're throwing mud at Linux and questioning the legal security of the businesses that are using it.
Regardless of how the SCO thing works out, you can be sure that MSFT will be using this FUD when trying to close deals with big business customers.
I'm glad to hear it. At least some states are sticking to their intentions of getting the money they were screwed out of, or screwed themselves out of.
*begin offtopic*
And yes, we need the money. The current governer has decided that his priorities are with the suburbanites, further widening the schism between upper and lower class.
(BALLMER)TAX CUTS! TAX CUTS! TAX CUTS!(/BALLMER)
*end offtopic*
Also a fellow Minnesotan (and proud to be one), I can see why they chose to settle the suit. It may not have helped the little guy, but given Microsoft more or less got off from the Federal Government, chances of this suit succeeding are very slim. Also - MS has been paying out CASH for quite a few of it's settlements - from the article "Microsoft previously paid $1.55 billion to settle similar suits in nine other states and the District of Columbia."
Hopefully this will result in that type of settlement and not the "free educational software" [which is ironic as the suit is because Microsoft was a monopoly - letting them put their software in schools only increases the monopoly].
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
This leaves us with 24 more states that have not come to any decision or have not gone after Microsoft.
Minnesota's citizens were overcharged between $10 to $70 a year. 9.7 million licenses were overcharged from 1994 to 2001. Silicon Valley
Microsoft attorneys said the company had done nothing wrong...
Then why settle even before the plaintiffs even finished putting on their case before the jury?
Could it be the case was compelling?
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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.
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"
Yep, i agree. Will someone please address this issue? i know we live in a time when a law suit is both a legit way to "right a wrong" and a way to intimidate, hush, or exact financial ruin upon someone.
How long will MS keep paying what looks to be hush money to make problems go away before someone notices that they are not chaging?
That is, of course, only one issue...i'm worried about what nberardi is worried about: at what point will legit suits against MS get tossed out because it looks/smells like another "let's hit MS's deep pockets" suit?
You've never been to the Minneapolis area have you?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
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
Microsoft will give Minnesota 700,000 copies of Microsoft Bob.
With only 4 million people TOTAL up here, thats normal enough.
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
Actually, most settlement agreements have a disclaimer of liability (not guilt, this wasn't a criminal trial). If this had gone to the jury and an actual verdict been issued, then the court may have had the ability to set up a situation where further improper conduct on MSFT's part would have resulted in contemp citations.
Yet another reason why MSFT benefits from settling.
--AC
Or try reading about it in the local paper the StarTribune story.
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
Fargo is in North Dakota. You betcha.
Casual Games/Downloads
Supposedly this was Gates rejoinder to Steve Jobs when the latter said, "We're better than you." Gates knows in this case that throwing a bit of cash to Minnesota to settle the suit doesn't really matter, either. It's the same Machiavellian insight as to what it takes to win his grand strategic goals at the cost of a few tactical losses. "Oh, I over charged you for the years between 1994 and 2001? So sorry. Here's a 30% refund in 2004. Thanks for the 70% I get to keep! (And the time I needed to eliminate my competition, hehe...)".
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
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?
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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.
Where can you get a FULL, non-upgrade, non-OEM copy of XP for less than $100?