Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Novell wins appeal of Microsoft antitrust lawsuit

By Greg Lamm, Seattle TechFlash

Microsoft Corp. lost an appeals court ruling in a lawsuit brought by computer maker Novell Inc.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit overturned a lower court’s ruling and ruled that Novell can proceed with its antitrust case against the Redmond computer giant, according to Reuters.

Novell’s case against Microsoft was filed in 2004, before the companies struck a broad patent licensing and business collaboration agreement. Novell alleged that Microsoft’s practices illegally harmed WordPerfect and Quattro Pro when those programs were owned by Novell, between 1994 and 1996.

In November, Seattle-based Attachmate Corp. reached an agreement to buy Novell Inc., the Massachusetts-based Linux vendor, for $2.2 billion.

Meanwhile, a consortium known as CPTN Holdings LLC that includes Apple, Oracle and EMC, in addition to Microsoft, bought 882 Novell patents for $450 million.

Story first appeared on the TechFlash blog in Seattle, a product of the Puget Sound Business Journal.