UPDATED 11:40 EDT / DECEMBER 20 2011

Microsoft Looking for Dismissal of Novell Lawsuit

Microsoft is looking to file a plea in court to dismiss a Novell antitrust lawsuit after the jury failed to reach a decision. This lawsuit was filed by Novell seven years ago in which it claimed that Microsoft used its reputation and position in the computer operating systems market to harm Novell’s desktop applications business. Novell has been struggling from all these seven years to prove Microsoft as culprit, but is not able to finish this off.

In a recent hearing on Friday at U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City, Utah, Microsoft was once again on the beneficial edge as the jury members were unable to reach a unanimous decision, and the judge declared a mistrial. Having this advantage, Microsoft’s lawyer said Monday that the company intends to renew its motion for judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. But on the flip side, Novell said that it will seek a re-trial in the case. Under rule 50, the court may allow judgment on the verdict if the jury returned a verdict, order a new trial, or direct the entry of judgment as a matter of law.  Microsoft will file the petition and submit papers for its support on January 13, 2012.

“Novell still believes in the strength of its claim. Clearly, this is a complicated technical case and Novell is hopeful that a retrial will allow the opportunity to address any uncertainties some of the jurors had with this trial,” said Novell attorney Jim Lundberg in a statement.

Legal battles are getting quite complicated and common in tech industry. A recent example is the antitrust lawsuit between Samsung and Apple, where Samsung claimed that Apple infringed on four of its patents. Reportedly, the products that infringed its patents are iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and iPad 2.

In another antitrust lawsuit between I.B.M. and the European Union, I.B.M. agreed to modify the way it supplied parts and information to rivals, while the European Union accepted I.B.M.’s offer to supply some spare parts and technical information to companies that service and maintain I.B.M. mainframe computers on nondiscriminatory terms for five years.

Moving forward, it’s all about patent infringement wars going on in the technology segment. After Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, and eBay, British Telecom (BT) is the latest to file a case against Google. BT has filed a patent infringement court case against Google, and said that its resulting patents have been infringed by Google’s search engines, Android system, Google+ social network, eBooks, Maps, Offers, Docs, Places, Gmail, Doubleclick advertising management system, AdWords advertisement listing program and other services. British Telecom is seeking triple damages for this infringement, and that’s more than Google is willing to pay.


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