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[Forbes News] Bill Gates: Inflicting Pain

2006/9/26镜像同步0 回复

Bill Gates: Inflicting Pain Emily Lambert 10.09.06 Start your calculator, Bill Gates. Iowa plaintiff lawyers want Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) to pay pain-and-suffering-like damages to consumers of Microsoft products. Microsoft's actions, according to the plaintiffs, have denied consumers a better computing experience (remember Netscape?), so they deserve compensation for "lost innovation" in the marketplace. The class action, banging around Iowa state courts for six years, is one of the last suits remaining in Microsoft's long antitrust battles and is on the docket for November. "Can [this case] expand the thinking of courts generally about what appropriate damages are in antitrust cases? Yes, I think so," says plaintiff counsel Roxanne Barton Conlin. Interesting take, considering that it would take a soothsayer to predict how our computing experience would have been different. "It would be extremely difficult to prove damages for 'lost innovation,' even if there are damages," says New York University law professor Eleanor Fox. Indeed, at least one federal court has tossed out the argument before. Since resolving the feds' antitrust allegations, Microsoft has settled more than a dozen private plaintiff cases. In those cases Microsoft has paid $2.1 billion for alleged overcharging, a more common refrain in lawsuits against the software giant. Microsoft has asked again to have the suit dismissed. Gates is a potential witness, but we suspect he's not yet preparing.

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