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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.'"
PC World
Forbes
FT.com (A good one!)
- 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
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 is Minnesota running out of money just like the EU? So they try to hit up the cash cow...
Well, MN is running out of money, but that isn't what this is about.
MN was one of the original states in the anti-trust lawsuit. When the other states settled, we didn't.
It just took this long to pan out.
-mls
For the same reason states got cigeratte money instead of the public for smoking and putting up with second hand smoke. Then they turned around and used that money for everything but the intended purpose. Which I really think what MN is hoping to do here.
It is usually cheaper to settle out of court than put this in the public domain. Look at what happened to OJ for instance, he was found guilty, but everybody thinks he is guilty except in the eyes of the law. Microsoft doesn't care what the law thinks of them, they care what their customers think of them, and that is why it is always cheaper to settle, and not set a president.
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
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.
Microsoft will give Minnesota 700,000 copies of Microsoft Bob.
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
Let me play the devils advocate here.
Could it be because the legal system in the country is so screwed up that it is simpler for a company to just settle every lawsuit it faces, regardless of merit, than it is to fight the lawsuit and win? Of course you could just as easily argue that fighting the case would have cost MN more than it would get if it won compared to what it got in the settlement.
There are two sides to every coin. One thing I think we can all agree to is that there is something seriously wrong with a legal system when the cost of prosecuting or defending a case is a significant factor in the direction a case goes.
Mmmm.. Donuts