Fourth Circuit Hands Novell Victory in Antitrust Suit Against Microsoft

Thursday, May 5, 2011
A federal appeals court ruled today that multinational software maker Novell, Inc. (recently acquired by Attachmate Corp.) could continue to pursue an antitrust suit against Microsoft Corp. involving claims that the tech giant used illegal business tactics to undercut Novell’s office productivity applications during the 1990s.

The decision, which reversed an earlier lower court ruling in favor of Microsoft, is a significant victory for Novell and its legal team, which includes Dickstein Shapiro partners Jeffrey Johnson and James Martin, as well as Charles J. Cooper of Cooper & Kirk. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit rejected Microsoft’s claim that Novell had signed away its ability to bring the suit in 1996, when it sold the rights to several of its products to Caldera, Inc. Concluding that Microsoft’s interpretation of the sale contract made “little sense,” the court found that Novell was free to bring antitrust claims regarding applications such as WordPerfect that were not part of the Caldera deal.
“We were pleased to hear that the Fourth Circuit agreed that Novell is entitled to its day in court,” Mr. Johnson said. “Microsoft used its monopoly power in the operating systems market to destroy Novell’s development of its popular office productivity applications such as WordPerfect and Quattro Pro.”
Novell filed suit against Microsoft in 2004, alleging that it had violated the Sherman Act by engaging in conduct to thwart competition in the operating systems market. Those actions included attacking Novell’s office productivity applications and PerfectOffice suite in order to widen the moat protecting its operating system monopoly.
For more than 40 years, Dickstein Shapiro has successfully represented clients in a variety of industries in complex antitrust and regulatory litigation. The firm is a leading representative of large companies as plaintiffs in treble damages antitrust actions in the United States, generating recoveries for clients that underscore how a corporate legal department can be a vital source of revenue.