Novell's WordPerfect Antitrust Suit Ends In Mistrial

According to a Bloomberg News article carried by Business Week, "Jurors said today they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict in Novell Inc.’s antitrust trial against Microsoft Corp. over the WordPerfect computer program. A mistrial was declared by the judge presiding over the case in federal court in Salt Lake City ... Novell sought as much as $1.3 billion in damages over allegations that Microsoft, while developing the Windows 95 operating system in 1994, blocked an element of the software to thwart Novell’s WordPerfect and Quattro Pro programs."

Comments

Re:The MS is on the other foot

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember being at the Microsoft Professional Developer’s conference (PDC) in 1993 in. I sat behind a row of Word Perfect programming managers. They slept late, came in mid-morning, seemed to think it a great joke that they had been sent out of town on a junket for Windows, which was *never* going to take off. They laughed, passed notes, and dozed, paying little attention as they knew no one would ever want windows for real work. They were looking forward to Disneyland on Thursday night, though.

And so it went for a week of introductions to the MFC.

Two years later, WordPerfect for windows did not seem to be actually written for windows, and wordperfecomplained they had been tricked. To an observer, though, it looked as if they never tired, and then tried to shift blame later.