A federal judge in Baltimore has tossed out several of Novell's remaining antitrust claims against Microsoft but allowed some to go forward.
Judge J. Frederick Motz ruled on Friday that Novell can go ahead with two claims that Microsoft engaged in unfair competition with regard to Novell's WordPerfect and Quattro Pro applications. Motz ruled that the four other claims were not filled within the proper time frame.
In his decision allowing one of the two Microsoft claims to proceed, Motz cited a now infamous 1997 e-mail from Office unit head Jeff Raikes to investor Warren Buffet, in which Raikes said that applications like Word and Excel can serve as a "moat" that protects against Windows competition. "If we own the key 'franchises' built on top of the operating system, we dramatically widen the 'moat' that protects the operating system business," Raikes said in the e-mail, cited in Motz's ruling.
News source: C|Net News.com
