US Supreme Court rejects Novell's appeal against Microsoft
29 Apr 2014
The US Supreme Court has turned down software maker Novell's appeal in its antitrust case against Microsoft, running since 2004.
The court yesterday allowed an appeals court ruling rejecting Novell's $1-billion lawsuit, claiming Microsoft undermined the once popular WordPerfect writing program in favour of its own Word program with the Windows 95 rollout.
According to Novell, it was duped by Microsoft into developing WordPerfect for Windows 95 only to pull the plug so Microsoft could gain market share with its own product. Novell said it had been forced to sell WordPerfect for a $1.2-billion loss.
According to the 10th Circuit ruling, Novell's complaint came too late and it had not been able to make the larger case that Microsoft was protecting a monopoly on operating systems.
Novell had originally claimed that the release of Windows 95 was deliberately delayed to hurt Novell's WordPerfect application software business, back in the 1990s.
Microsoft, however, maintained that the delay had nothing to do with Novell, but was due to the company requiring more time to finalise on the features it wanted to include in the OS.
According to Novell, Microsoft withheld software components known in programming language as namespace extensions, to make it difficult for rivals to run their programs flawlessly on Windows.
Jurors in the federal court did not reach a unanimous verdict in December 2011, after which Novell filed an appeal in 2013, which the Denver-based 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals threw out.
According to Novell, the delay slowed the development of WordPerfect and cost the company time and market share, which finally it to sell it to sell WordPerfectat a loss of $1.2-billion.
The Denver Court said Novell's complaint came a little too late when the company first sued Microsoft in 2004 - several years after the original issue took place.
The court further ruled that Novell had not been able to make the larger case that Microsoft was protecting a monopoly on operating systems.
