Not much about the legal industry is funny, in fact a good deal of it makes most people cringe (myself included), but while checking out Groklaw tonight I found a link to a legal story that was so funny I found myself needing to share it here. The short of the story as detailed here, is that a young University student legally bought some Microsoft software, then realised he’d likely have to wipe his hard drive and start from scratch to use it. So he decided to return it to the shop, and was rejected. Then he tried to return it to Microsoft, and was rejected again. Lastly he decided to sell the unopened software on Ebay and after some tussling, he sold both items and made roughly $145 profit to boot. Microsoft then filed a lawsuit against the young man claiming he infringed their trademark and copyright, and that he caused: “irreparable injury to its business reputation and goodwill”.

The young lad chose to fight back rather then cave to the demand for his car, and after about 37 filings, a counter-claim and a request for a jury trial, Microsoft relented and said they’d drop the suit if he dropped his counter-claim. This was no longer enough for the young student who wanted an apology and reimbursement for his copies. After realising that he wasn’t likely to get an apology from Microsoft he went to the press. When the lawyers realised that the case was a PR nightmare for Microsoft he got a settlement, part of which was a Microsoft non-disclosure agreement, meaning that he isn’t allowed to talk about the case any more. The ironic thing about it all, is that Microsoft would be paying a pretty penny to it’s lawyers, so the cost of this case to them would have been an order of magnitude more then the full retail price of the two items of software at issue. Not only that, but they relented too late and it was too late to stop the story getting out.

This is seriously funny, but don’t take my word for it, read the full story yourself. It’s much funnier then my summary here. Myself, I’m starting to get a real understanding for that joke about the difference between a dead dog on the road and a dead lawyer. (There are skid marks in front of the dog).

This article was posted on Monday, April 4th, 2005 at 6:25 pm