Vista Capable Lawsuit Loses Class-Action Status

nandemoari writes "The long-running 'Vista Capable' lawsuit challenging Microsoft's marketing of PCs capable of running only the most basic version of the Windows Vista operating system has reportedly lost its class-action status. Federal judge Marsha Pechman decertified the class-action lawsuit, saying that plaintiffs had failed to show that consumers paid more for PCs with the 'Vista Capable' label than they would have otherwise."

Comments

Slightly Misleading

[pdabbadabba]

The summary (and, indeed, the article) is a little misleading. It is not that they didn't show that the plaintiffs didn't pay more (if the judge had found that, the case probably would have been dismissed). Rather, they lost their clase certification because they hadn't shown that all the plaintiffs in the class had uniformly overpaid.

To form a class, the plaintiffs' situations situations have to be relevantly similar. Her ruling was just that, in essence, the cases hadn't been shown to be similar enough to be litigated as a class.

Now the cases will proceed individually, with each plaintiff having to show individually that they overpaid.

Re:Slightly Misleading

[pdabbadabba]

Nope. It does matter whether they paid more. They are claiming unjust enrichment which requires that MS profit from the deceptive practices. This means that it has to be shown (now on a case by case basis) that the plaintiffs actually paid more than they otherwise would for the deceptively marketed computers.

(IANAL, but I will be AL soon and I have a fair deal of experience with these sorts of consumer class actions. And this, of course, is not legal advice. Take my word for it: the federal court system is far less corrupt than you think it is [though YMMV with state and local courts].)

Re:Monitors

[MBGMorden]

Could have been a DRM thing. I'm too tired to look up the exact acronym (though HDCP is sounding familiar), but Vista implemented new support for certain monitors having end to end encryption between the video card and the display, so that it wasn't possible to directly capture the video from the video cable. There was originally plans (that I'm not sure if they ever came to fruition) to downgrade HD video on monitors that didn't conform to this standard (or were connected using standard DSUB cables instead of HDMI or DVI).

Re:Monitors

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.ubuntu.com/partners/hardwareprogramme

TFA seems to disagree

[zooblethorpe]

The fact that they had to pay more for a machine that was Vista capable, when the basic machines weren't Vista capable (yet labeled as such) is a big part of that argument.

A good idea, but I don't think that's the argument. Actually reading TFA (I know, I know), it sure sounds like the judge is saying that the prosecution is arguing that the low-end machines labeled as "Vista Capable" were somehow deliberately overpriced, thereby leading to 'unjust enrichment' for Microsoft. If so, this really seems like a royal screw-up for the prosecution, since it's your version of the argument that makes much more sense (at least to me, but IANAL).

Cheers,

"Vista Capable" laptop == "$2100 email machine"

[zooblethorpe]

Here you go. The PDF linked in the article shows the actual email thread, including the "I now have a $2100 email machine" money quote by MS executive Mike Nash.

Cheers,

Re:Monitors

[Khyber]

Then explain to me why it's on my ANALOG 22" LCD as well, then. There is no HDMI or DVI connection, so just how is HDCP implemented?

The Vista Capable is just a marketing scheme.