The US Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling that Novell can continue its antitrust suit against Microsoft. Following todays popular fashion of redundancy and wastefullness, this case was about whether or not to have a court case.

The case was specifically about who can sue for antitrust violations. According to Microsoft, it “offered an opportunity to address the question of who may assert antitrust claims.” The findings are that Novell will be able to continue litigation against Microsoft, even though Novel isn’t in the business of “operating systems” at least as it pertains to this case.

Novell claims that Microsoft “specifically targeted WordPerfect and Novell’s other office productivity applications because they threatened Microsoft’s Windows monopoly.” That suit was filed in 2004, but the issues were from almost 10 years prior. Novell had decided to compete with Microsoft Office in productivity applications market with a purchase of WordPerfect and Quattro Pro for $1 billion. After the disaster, which is blamed on the antitrust violations, Novell sold the applications for $170 million.

Microsoft of course claims that the reason that WordPerfect and Quattro Pro failed is because nobody liked them. “We look forward to addressing this and other substantive matters in the case before the trial court.”

Since the initial antitrust claims, Novell and Microsoft have become business allies. Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian says that despite the litigation, the business relationship between Novell and Microsoft continues to improve.

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 4:49 pm under Legal, Microsoft.

Read more entries by Ken Mitchell.
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