IBM has just won a settlement from Microsoft to the tune of 775 million dollars as well as 75 million in credit for Microsoft software licenses. I wasn’t even aware that IBM had an anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft so this one flew below my radar for a long time. This case arose from of the DOJ verses Microsoft anti-trust case in the mid nineties where judge Jackson found that IBM was one of the companies affected by Microsoft activities. The settlement resolves claims regarding both the OS2 Operating System and the Smartsuite Office application suite but does not cover any damages related to IBM’s server hardware or software. That being said IBM have agreed not to claim for any damages for the period up to July 2002 and will not try to claim any server damages for at least 2 years.
In the last couple of years or so, Microsoft has handed over literally billions of dollars to pay off several companies that had accused them of anti-competitive practises including AOL, Gateway, Sun, Novel, CCIA and now IBM. Microsoft’s trouble isn’t over yet though as they still have pending anti-competitive litigation with Novell regarding Wordperfect. They still have the European Union anti-competitive guilty verdict to appeal and they’ve just been sued by the pen computing company Go for yet more anti-competitive activities.
What amazes me about all this, is that when I recently drew attention to the Firefox right click problem at MSN, the developers seemed quite upset that I implied that it may have been intentional. I can understand why they might be upset at the idea, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how they couldn’t understand why people are so quick to jump to that sort of conclusion. Apparently they have short memories with regards to their parent companies history.
