[Am-info] Re: MS Depositions

[Mitch Stone]

--- From a message sent by Paul Rickard on 1/30/02 5:59 PM ---

>========== On 2002.01.30 04:45 PM, John J. Urbaniak typed: ============
>
>>I don't mean settlement.  Has there ever been a case where the Judge or jury
>>ruled in favor of Microsoft?
>>
>>If, as I think, the answer is no, why are all these lawyers so terrified to
>>take the bastards on?
>
>    They won the lawsuit Appled filed against them over the look and feel 
>of Windows. That's all I can think of, and it was probably 10 years ago.

This suit was whittled down by the judge to the point where it was either 
dismissed or dropped. Key to this case was a contract Apple signed giving 
Microsoft rights to use Mac interface elements in Windows 1.0, or at 
least so Apple had thought. Microsoft took the contract to mean they had 
rights to use Mac interface elements for any product they wished; the 
court essentially sided with Microsoft. According to what I've read, this 
contract was only three pages long -- three pages that changed the course 
of the PC industry, as it turned out.

 Mitch Stone  
 mitch@accidentalexpert.com