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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 18 2012 @ 10:08 AM EDT |
It was Microsoft's JMOL, so the judge was required to draw all
inferences about evidence, disputed facts, etc. in the way most favorable to the
non- moving party, Novell. He was not supposed to weigh anything--unless there
was no possible way a reasonable jury might find for Novell That's
what he did on that point. He decided it in favor of Novell. If anyone will
appeal that part of the ruling, it will be Microsoft.
He decided some
other points in favor of Microsoft, but not that one:Therefore, if
the only question raised by the Rule 50 motion were whether the jury was asked
to weigh the factors that led Microsoft to make the October 3, 1994 decision, I
would deny the Rule 50 motion. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 18 2012 @ 10:35 AM EDT |
The interesting question is: Why did he rule that way? Is he biased
against Novell? He has been hard on Microsoft in previous antitrust cases, but
in this one he's been happy to buy whatever arguments Microsoft was selling.
What changed? This is a far weaker case than the others. There is
very little of it left. The strong parts of the case were thrown out early on
because the statute of limitations ran out on them. (Yes, there is no doubt that
Microsoft competed against WordPerfect illegally, but those claims are gone.)
Also Novell traded away their rights to sue for Microsoft sabotaging
WordPerfect's distribution channels. The only argument Novell has left is a
complicated one where Novell must prove several different things in addition to
the fact that Microsoft sabotaged WordPerfect. It's those other things that are
the problem. (Novell seemed to base their arguments upon Microsoft's paranoid
fears being accurate. Perhaps they needed to; I don't know.)
During the
last appeal, two of the judges allowed Novell to keep their one remaining hope
alive, but the third wanted to throw even that out. If Novell had filed about
four years earlier, things would have been very different. We'll have to see how
well Novell does this time.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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