The Virginia Supreme Court ruled against America Online in its efforts to protect the identity of one of its 35 million subscribers by asking the court to quash a subpoena calling for the member's name in an issue that goes to the heart of the anonymity of the Internet. The ruling against the world's largest Internet service provider, based in Dulles, Virginia, was the latest in the evolution of privacy laws as they pertain to the Internet and identities of Web surfers, privacy experts said.
The Virginia Supreme Court sided with a lower California court's ruling that supported Nam Tai Electronics Inc.'s request to subpoena the identity of an AOL user as part of a complaint that alleged libel, trade libel and violations of California's unfair business practice statutes.
Microsoft on Monday announced plans for its first set of software tools designed to help banks and other financial institutions process payments and conduct capital markets trading entirely online. The new product, called BizTalk Accelerator for Financial Services, is a component of Microsoft BizTalk Server, software designed to help companies link different computing systems together to share data and conduct transactions.
BizTalk Server, first released in late 2000, is one of Microsoft's growing stable of .Net Enterprise server products, which includes the Exchange e-mail software; the SQL Server database for storing and collecting corporate and Web site data; and the Commerce Server for building e-commerce Web sites.
The antitrust remedies imposed on Microsoft Corp. late last week are widely seen as insufficient to bring about substantive change in the software market, but some industry observers say that the ruling out of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia could indirectly affect other cases pending against the software giant, here and in Europe.
Private antitrust lawsuits filed in the U.S. District Court in Baltimore by industry rivals seeking monetary damages are unlikely to garner support from Kollar-Kotelly's decision, legal scholars said. "Either the plaintiffs will be able to prove they suffered monetary harm or they won't," said Norman Hawker, associate professor at Haworth College of Business at Western Michigan University. Hawker added that rivals seeking injunctive relief are likely to be hurt by this month's decision in Washington, however.
"I think a judge in a private lawsuit is going to be very reluctant to do something at the request of a private party when a federal judge hasn't done anything," said Hawker, who is also a research fellow at the American Antitrust Institute in Washington. "A judge would be reluctant to give Sun Microsystems something that another judge would not give the attorney general of California."
Just days after the company was handed a resounding legal victory by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, Microsoft got another reprieve when a Baltimore judge ruled that Netscape cannot hold the software giant liable for destroying its Web browser business. US District Judge J. Frederick Motz is presiding over a number of private lawsuits that arose in the wake of Microsoft's federal case, and one of the criteria before him concerns whether the new suits could use the Findings of Fact from the federal case. A California court has already ruled that most of the Findings of Fact do apply to private lawsuits in that state, making it easier for plaintiffs there to seek monetary damages from the convicted monopolist. And while Motz also approved a number of the facts from the Findings of Fact in Netscape's lawsuit, he withheld a key ruling that might have greatly helped the company.
Microsoft could go on a shopping spree now that last week's antitrust ruling has eliminated a threat to its huge cash stash, one analyst said yesterday. The company also now has more latitude in its buying behavior, because the stringent conduct controls that nine non-settling states had sought are also out of the picture, said Scott McAdams, chief executive of McAdams Wright Ragen Inc.
The world's largest software company was sitting on $40.5 billion in cash and short-term investments at September's end. That's money that it might have had to use complying with U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly's ruling in the 4-year-old antitrust action. But the judge issued a ruling Friday that embraced a more moderate settlement among Microsoft, the Justice Department and nine states.
Computer vendor Dell Computer on Monday said it will on Nov. 18 begin sales of a handheld computer bearing its name, a highly anticipated entry expected to pressure leading handheld maker Palm Inc. Dell said it has begun to alert its sales and marketing channels of the new device, Dell Axim X5, powered by Microsoft Pocket PC operating system software. Personal digital assistants, or PDAs, are popular pocket-sized devices used to keep contact or date book information. Palm dominates the market for both PDAs sold, and for the software that drives handhelds, which it licenses to manufacturers such as Handspring and Sony.
Microsoft has released new tools for its SQL Server database that should make it easier for its partners to create data analysis applications for their customers in the financial services and manufacturing industries, the software maker said Monday.
Microsoft released two new templates for its SQL Server Accelerator for BI, a rapid application development tool that automates some of the low-level programming work required to build analytical applications, often referred to as " business intelligence" (BI) applications. The templates add support for financial services and manufacturing companies, and follow similar templates released in May for retail and sales and marketing.
The idea is to help customers make use of information stored in their enterprise applications that could help them to make better business decisions. The templates make it faster and easier to build applications that analyze such information, Microsoft said.
Friday's antitrust ruling may give Microsoft powerful ammunition to defend against more than 60 private lawsuits pending against the software giant, legal experts say. "This judge has presented powerful reasoning to Microsoft's lawyers for defending its various private lawsuits that will allow them to argue that much of Judge Jackson's 'findings of fact' are irrelevant or at least should not be accepted wholesale by these other courts as a clear basis for antitrust liability," said Rich Gray, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based attorney closely following the trial.
"Just as the plaintiffs in these other cases have been introducing Judge Jackson's 'findings of fact,' I think it is more likely we will be submitting, rather than they, the determination that was made (on Friday)," he said. "There will be findings (in Kollar-Kotelly's ruling) that will be useful in these other cases. At the same time, I don't think that everything in these other cases will be disposed of by either Judge Kotelly or Judge Jackson."
After a court victory for Microsoft in the United States the battle now shifts to Europe, where Competition Commissioner Mario Monti may soon impose his own set of sanctions against the software giant. Monti will make a preliminary decision by the end of the year whether to act against Microsoft for allegedly abusing dominance in its Windows operating system.
A Microsoft representative said that in the interests of trans-Atlantic consistency the company hopes the U.S. decision will become a reference point. "Legally they (the European Commission) are free to do whatever they deem appropriate," said Horacio E. Gutierrez, associate general counsel for Microsoft in Europe. But, he said, "We think that in the interests of trans-Atlantic consistency we hope they would weigh these decisions with the other facts before them." He said it is conceivable the Commission might take steps inconsistent with Kollar-Kotelly's decision. "We are looking forward to continuing the dialogue with the Commission," he said.
It's too early to say it's over, but it's over, and the Microsoft-bashers lost. With the Justice Department happy, Microsoft is now in a position to spend whatever's necessary to make the nine non-settling states and the private antitrust suits simply go away. After that, it really will be over. Judge Kollar-Kotelly's ruling last week stopped just short of saying to the non-settling states and their corporate partners, "Are you people nuts?" I don't think she ever seriously considered trying to "fix" the marketplace.
Fact is, there was no political will to do anything about Microsoft. Why? Because, for all the anger in some quarters (especially among some of you TalkBack posters), most consumers don't feel like they've been screwed by Microsoft. They may not feel loved or well cared for, but they don't feel like they've been terribly mistreated, either. And those few who do feel screwed by Microsoft never yelled loudly enough to catch Washington's attention.