IBM Corp is headed for partial victory in its campaign to have the 1956 consent decree with the Justice Department set aside (it should complain: General Electric Co Inc has only just had a consent decree set aside and it has been waiting since 1911!) The Justice Department is tentatively considering ending parts of the decree that apply to current personal computers and workstations, which had not been invented in 1956. But it still has concerns about provisions that apply to IBM’s System 360/390 and AS/400 lines, and added that while many sections were meant to be temporary, others were intended to apply perpetually. As well as the RS/6000 and personal computers, the Justice Department appears willing to free IBM’s $10,000m-a-year services business from the need to operate as an arms-length subsidiary and make it pay the full retail price for equipment and software it buys from IBM to resell to customers. It is not immediately willing to free IBM from the requirement that it must wait 60 days before resel ling used mainframes and sell them to used computer dealers, or that it sell as well as lease mainframes and mid-range machines. IBM said it had not yet seen the filing.
