Re: AutoCAD

["Lewis A. Mettler" <lmettler@lamlaw.com>]

Intellectual property rights and antitrust laws do conflict to a great
extent.

Clearly a non monopolist should have protections both by way of
certificates (patents, trademarks, copyrights, etc.) and technology
(secret file formats) to protect their products from competitors. 
Reverse engineering does (or may) frustrate a leading product provider
and it does provide for a form of competition.

I have a problem expecting open technology to be very effective in
providing true competition.

Requiring Microsoft to open its technology might prevent some of its
"dirty tricks" but is not going to encourage companies to offer a
consumer OS.  Assuming open code could not be legally copied and sold
immediately (as true open source provides), any competitor would always
be months behind the market leader in providing a competing product.

It is for that reason that I have suggested splitting Microsoft
horizontally.  And, I do not suggest making three Microsofts, either.  I
have suggested taking the code base for Windows and selling it to 6 or 8
existing major players in the industry.  Companies such as IBM, HP,
Oracle, Sun, Novell, Caldera, Corel, Inprise, Dell, AOL, Symantec and
others may very well be interested in continuing the development of
Windows and compete openly for business.  One or two companies can even
be formed using Microsoft money.  But, the code would not be exclusive. 
It would not necessarily be open to all.  But, it would be  open to the
group.

I assume that a voluntary standards organization would immediately be
formed by these players to assure compatibility.

This kind of a solution would also minimize the obvious effort to bundle
applications and utilities with the OS.  6 or 8 major players are not
likely to agree on bundling any application.

Opening up the technology of the OS might help application competitors
but does little to solve the basic fundamental problem we currently face
(I.E. Microsoft has a monopoly on the consumer OS and is not going to
follow the law if it means reducing the value of that monopoly).

Lewis  

James Love wrote:
> 
> One of the proposed remedies for the MS monopoly that we have
> supported are interoperability remedies, such as requiring
> MS to publish data on data file format and to not deliberately
> undermine incompatiablity by rival programs.  This missive
> from the ABA list has an interesting note regarding an
> FTC investigation of AutoCAD on a similar matter. Jamie
> 
> --------------------------
>        Re: Washington Post - FTC Has Tough Case To Prove Against Intel
>    Date:
>        Sat, 6 Mar 1999 09:48:26 -0500
>   From:
>        "Sharp, Larry D." <ldsharp@mwbb.com>
>     To:
>        AT-MEMBERS@ABANET.ORG
> 
> My understanding from press reports is that an AutoDesk competitor
> complained to the FTC that AutoDesk has inserted a proprietary string of
> code into its file formats in a maintenance release. The new string made
> files created by AutoCAD unreadable in competitive programs (which, as I
> understand it, were AutoCAD knock-offs created by reverse engineering).
> AutoCAD claims, as I understand it, that it was simply trying to protect
> its intellectual property. The competitor is claiming that AutoCAD is
> attempting to maintain a monopoly, and wants the file format to be open.
> 
> The resolution of this issue could tell us a great deal about how the
> agencies are going to deal with software in the area where the law of
> intellectual property intersects with antitrust law.
> 
> --
> James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
> P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
> http://www.cptech.org    love@cptech.org
> Voice 202.387.8030, Fax 202.234.5176

-- 
Lewis A. Mettler, Esq.(Attorney and Software Developer)
lmettler@LAMLaw.com
http://www.lamlaw.com/ (web site reviews Microsoft antitrust transcripts
daily)