A previous agreement made by Intuit Inc with the owner of the main competitor to Chipsoft Inc’s tax preparation software could cause regulators to give the proposed acquisition by Intuit of Chipsoft the thumbs down, the Wall Street Journal reckons: Meca Software Inc sells TaxCut and Chipsoft gave up on an attempt to acquire Meca after the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division expressed misgivings about the deal, but TaxCut is actually owned by Legal Knowledge Systems Inc – and Intuit entered an agreement on April 6 giving it the right to acquire Legal Knowledge until April 1994, and crucially gives the shareholders of Legal Knowledge the right to require Intuit to buy on or before March 31 1994, all of the outstanding capital stock of Legal; the issue is complicated by the fact that although Intuit would then own both TurboTax and TaxCut, Legal Knowledge would be required to continue to honour its TaxCut sales licence agreement with Meca.
