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Class Action Lawsuits Dismissed in Maryland
On Friday, January 12, U.S. District Court Chief Judge J. Frederick Motz dismissed the majority of class action lawsuits pending against Microsoft in proceedings in Baltimore, Maryland. It is unknown whether plaintiffs' attorneys will file an appeal in the face of the positive ruling for Microsoft.
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Tech Companies Decry "Misguided" Antitrust Policies in Open Letter to Bush, Congress
Sixty small technology companies and the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT at www.actonline.org) have published an Open Letter to the 107th Congress and Bush administration stating their concerns about the lawsuit's impact on the industry and the nation's economic success. The letter ran as an advertisement in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, and warned that: "Misguided application of antitrust laws, such as the case against Microsoft, ignores the realities of our industry and could create disastrous new rules to govern competitive behavior in the 'new economy.'"
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Antitrust Suit: Update
On Friday, January 12, the federal government and 19 states asked the D.C. Court of Appeals to uphold a lower court ruling in the government's antitrust suit against Microsoft that ordered the company to be broken up.
Microsoft will file its brief in response to the governments' on January 29. Oral arguments are scheduled for February 26 and 27, with a final decision not anticipated for several months following those proceedings.
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Starr, Dellinger, Bork Co-author Brief for Microsoft Competitors
Also on January 12, ProComp, a high-tech trade group of Microsoft rivals, including Oracle, AOL Time Warner and Sun Microsystems, filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the governments' case. The brief was co-authored, with Robert Bork and Walter Dellinger, former solicitors general, by former Whitewater prosecutor Ken Starr, whose investigation into the Monica Lewinsky scandal resulted in the impeachment of President Clinton.
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Tell Us What You Think!
This Newsletter is for you, the readers. We want to know what you think about The Freedom to Innovate Newsletter. What would you like to see us include in this newsletter? What areas should we expand? What should we leave out? What questions would you like to see this publication answer? E-mail our editor, Kim, to leave your comments at:
msfin@microsoft.com
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