Legal Archive

FSF, the leading free software group has vowed to fight portions of a request to release information that could help the SCO Group in its legal battle against Linux.

The European Council on Tuesday approved controversial changes to the European Union's Software Patents Directive that will pave the way for widespread patenting of software in Europe.

Buried in recently published financial documents is the news that Lindows, Inc., has been engaged in a lawsuit with rival and one-time partner Xandros, Inc. since the middle of December 2002. Lindows claims that Xandros failed to repay a $750,000 loan, and that the company and other defendants engaged in fraud & criminal misrepresentation during the negotiations leading up to Lindows' investment in Xandros.

The EU commission's decision about Microsoft rose some heated discussion on nearly every part of it. Let's take an accurate look at it and discuss the hows and whys of the act that is going probably to change Europe's technological assets in the near future.

The motion by Genesi in their case against Amiga Inc was granted in part, but denied in other ways. Specifically, Genesi is granted rights to AmigaDE (source code access is not specifically mentioned), but denies them access to AmigaOS. Read more to get to the actual file and description.

Microsoft apologized to jurors for its past anticompetitive practices during opening statements Wednesday in a case alleging the company's antitrust violations include word processing and spreadsheet software. "Yes, we acknowledge that and we apologize for it," said David Tulchin, a Microsoft attorney. "The conduct involved competition that went over the line. The question for you is whether or not consumers were overcharged."

Here is the transcript of the Dan Farber interview with Darl McBride at the Sand Hill Group's Software 2004 conference in San Francisco, which Groklaw has been given permission to transcribe.

The European Commission is expected (free reg. req.) to declare Microsoft an abusive monopolist, impose a fine of $100 million to $1 billion and order the company to make fundamental changes to the way it sells software in Europe. Such a ruling would be a significant setback for Microsoft after it overcame its most serious legal challenge by settling a sweeping antitrust case in the USA in 2001.

Just as the legal battle over Linux was about to become even more expensive, Microsoft suggested that a hedge fund invest in the outfit. Read the report at BusinessWeek and at News.com.

Newsforge & GrokLaw report that "Although the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) never officially makes public when it investigates an organization, an SEC staff member told NewsForge that complaints and tips about suspected under-the-table funding, stock-kiting, illegal insider trading, and money-laundering involving Microsoft or Microsoft-connected individuals to the financially struggling SCO Group have been coming into the agency with regularity since last August.

OpenOffice.org has offered a free, open XML file format for over 3 years, while Microsoft has just begun to introduce their own implementation of XML in their new office suite products. MS is attempting to patent their software's internal methods of handling XML as well as their own XML schemas.

The legal battle with Microsoft that has seen Linux reseller Lindows running a gantlet of courts over trademark infringement seems, for the moment, to be going in the open-source company's favor.

The Microsoft antitrust settlement is to be reviewed by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, this week. But lawyers at the Department of Justice and the settled States have already been indicated that they're not altogether happy with Microsoft's compliance to the arrangement they signed 14 months ago.

There's been a bunch of news recently about Microsoft's continuing anti-trust problems. There were arguments in Massachusetts' appeal of the consent decree between MS and the Department of Justice. Also, three days of hearings occurred this week in the European Union's investigation of MS conduct in Europe. Nothing definitive happened, but there are some intriguing bits and pieces that surfaced.