By Rachel Chalmers
US District Judge Dee Benson has issued a 68-page opinion denying four of Microsoft Corp’s motions for partial summary judgement in its antitrust lawsuit with Caldera Inc. Caldera claims that Windows 95 is illegally tied to MS-DOS; that Microsoft created intentional and perceived incompatibilities between Windows 3.1 and DR DOS; and that Microsoft had blacklisted DR DOS developers, preventing them from receiving the Windows 3.1 beta. Microsoft objected to each of these claims, but Judge Benson has ruled that enough evidence supports these claims to allow them to proceed to trial.
Caldera has sued Microsoft over the tactics it used to quash DR- DOS, a rival to its own MS-DOS, back in the late eighties and early nineties. DR-DOS was developed by Digital Research Inc, which was acquired by Novell Corp. Caldera inherited the software and the lawsuit from Novell. The first plan was to sell DR-DOS into the embedded market while prosecuting Microsoft for anti- competitive behavior. Then Caldera decided to build an embedded version of Linux. DR-DOS is effectively dead, but its legacy lingers in the suit.
Microsoft made nine motions for partial summary judgement, and Judge Benson has now denied eight of the nine. A hearing is scheduled for November 10, because Caldera would like to call two more witnesses to the trial. The identities of those witnesses have not been made public. The final pre-trial hearing is scheduled for December 7. At that point, the judge will decide which issues, witnesses and exhibits will be used in the trial. The jury trial itself is slated to begin on January 17. Judge Benson has said that neither Microsoft not Caldera can move that date. The only thing that might delay it at this point is a criminal case.
Caldera’s VP of marketing communications, Lyle Ball, admits his company is delighted by the denial of Microsoft’s motions for summary judgement, and unfazed by the prospect of the jury trial. We would really like to get to trial, he told ComputerWire. Our case attempts to show that Microsoft’s behavior was an orchestration, not compartmentalized. Microsoft’s lawyers tried to fragment that case by creating straw men, but they haven’t been successful. Ball is confident that Caldera’s lawyers can communicate the intricacies of the case to a lay jury. Some of the issues are technical, some business, some financial, some strategic, but it’s our responsibility to show the evidence in a way that’s appealing, he said. Microsoft did not respond to calls for comment.
