By Siobhan Kennedy
Microsoft Corp yesterday defended itself against Monday’s class action lawsuit by producing figures that show the upgrade price for its Windows operating system software is cheaper than all its competitors.
As we reported Monday, three antitrust lawyers in the state of California issued a class action lawsuit against Microsoft on behalf of two plaintiffs. The suit alleged that Microsoft used its monopoly power in the desktop OS marketplace to charge its customers a premium for upgrades to newer versions of the software.
As evidence, the two plaintiff’s cited specific data contained within Judge Jackson’s findings of facts. Jackson, who is presiding over the Microsoft/DoJ antitrust case, found that the software giant charged consumers $40 above the going, competitive rate for desktop OS upgrades.
But speaking to ComputerWire yesterday Jim Cullinan, a Microsoft spokesperson, denied the allegation. It’s especially ironic when you consider that our prices are consistently lower than all our competitors. IBM charges $149 for an OS2 upgrade, Apple charges $99 for a Macintosh upgrade and the BeOS upgrade is $99. Ours is $89.
Cullinan said it was very unfortunate for consumers, the economy and Microsoft that these kind of groundless and baseless law suits are being filed against an American company that has driven prices down and delivered innovation to consumers.
He stressed the fact that the class action suit is based on facts that don’t yet carry any legal clout. First of all these findings of fact don’t have any legal weight until the judge passes his final ruling next year, he said, and if we appeal that whole process could be delayed for the next couple of years.
For that reason, Cullinan said the suit was just a good example of attorneys not trying to do things that benefit consumers, but just going after money. He added that Microsoft would defend itself in this class action suit, or any other that might follow on – although he declined to speculate on the number of copycat cases that may or may not ensue.
