Microsoft faces another Antitrust Suit

After having accepted a 775 million dollars just a couple of days back in damages to IBM as a result of the famous antitrust lawsuit, the company is facing another lawsuit filed by Go Corporation seeking unspecified damages alleging Microsoft developed competing products after having seen a demonstration under non-disclosure.

The lawsuit filed in the US District Court in San Francisco last week, also alleges that Microsoft tried to "kill off" Go in the early 1990s. According to the suit, Microsoft allegedly used various "incentives and threats" to pressure Compaq, Fujitsu, Toshiba and other OEMS into rejecting Go’s operating system.

Founded in 1987 by S. Jerrold Kaplan, the former chief scientist of Lotus Development, Go set out to develop a class of portable computer controlled by a pen rather than a keyboard.

A portion of the case hinges on the behavior of Microsoft’s engineers after they had been given access to Go’s technology under a nondisclosure agreement. The lawsuit cites Microsoft documents that suggest the engineers were gathering intelligence to help Microsoft develop a competing product.

A Microsoft spokeswoman, Stacy Drake, said, "These claims are 20 years old, and they were baseless then and they are baseless now."

Reach by telephone on Sunday, Mr. Kaplan declined to comment. But in testimony last year on a class-action filed against Microsoft in Minnesota, Mr. Kaplan said that he had been surprised by evidence that Microsoft had been plotting to defeat Go.

"This was a corporate mugging that went uncorrected and unknown," Mr. Kaplan said in interview last year.

The events surrounding the failure of Go have been cited as a reason for the animosity between Silicon Valley executives and Microsoft. Go was a prominent effort by entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to create software for tablet-sized devices.

"While Microsoft’s original pen-enabled version of Windows stirred little interest, the company has continued to pursue handwriting recognition as a means of computer input, most recently with its Windows XP Tablet PC Edition."

Source: 24x7updates.com/FullStory-News-Microsoft_faces_another_Antitrust_Suit-ID-74405.html