RSSNovell Sues Microsoft Over WordPerfect
By David Worthington | Published November 13, 2004, 10:22 AM
Just days after Microsoft settled outstanding claims regarding Novell Netware with a $536 million cash payout, Novell has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Utah seeking unspecified damages for what it says is unfair competition in the productivity applications market.
The suit alleges that Microsoft withheld critical technical information from Novell when the company owned the WordPerfect word processing application immediately following a 1994 merger with WordPerfect Corporation. Furthermore, Novell's complaint makes the accusation that Microsoft strong-armed partner OEMs into not carrying the software.
In 1996, Novell sold WordPerfect to Corel for $170 million USD along with its Quattro Pro spreadsheet application acquired from Borland.
According to Novell, "WordPerfect's share of the word processing market was almost 50 percent in 1990, but fell to less than 10 percent by the time Novell sold WordPerfect and related applications in 1996. Microsoft Word's share of the word processing market rose from approximately 20 percent prior to 1990 to a monopoly share of approximately 90 percent by 1996."
In response to Novell's filing, Microsoft's counteroffensive has already begun.
Microsoft has called Novell's decision to litigate "unfortunate," stating that, "Novell seeks to blame Microsoft for its own mismanagement and poor business decisions. It's also unfortunate, and surprising, that Novell has just now chosen to litigate over a business it owned for a very short time and that it sold more than eight years ago."
"Prior to Novell's purchase of WordPerfect in 1994, WordPerfect had already begun to decline. Indeed, Novell's stock dropped 15 percent the day after it announced the acquisition. WordPerfect deliberately chose not to develop a version for early versions of Windows in the hope that depriving Windows of a key application would limit the success of Windows. This and other missteps led to a decline in WordPerfect popularity that resulted in Novell selling it for approximately one-eighth of what was paid for it only 20 months earlier," read a statement issued from Microsoft.
The allegation that Microsoft withheld crucial information that gave its own products a competitive advantage over the competition rests at the heart of the complaint. Plaintiffs in the U.S. and European antitrust cases cried foul on this talking point, and as a result, the U.S. ordered Microsoft to be more transparent and to reveal Windows' inner workings. Microsoft was also berated by the court for its anticompetitive licensing terms.
"Windows licensing practices played an important role in the U.S. antitrust case. What Office licensing practices might the Novell case expose? The U.S. courts rapped Microsoft for exclusive arrangements. Are there any that a judge might consider anticompetitive? My point: The issues surrounding the case are complex, and I'd be surprised if they ultimately even remotely resemble the black-and-white positions the companies took today," remarked Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox in his Microsoft Monitor Web log.
But the inner workings of Novell WordPerfect may be more applicable to the situation at hand. In context, upgrades from DOS versions of WordPerfect to Windows 3.x and 95 were notoriously buggy, although the upgrade path was forged within a period of four years. Product pricing will also be examined; WordPerfect cost nearly $500 USD at the time and was a standalone application, while Microsoft packaged together an entire suite of products to run the workplace gauntlet from word processing to presentations to spreadsheets.
"The case is opportunity for Novell to air Microsoft's laundry. I won't guess as to dirty or clean. So far, most antitrust cases focused on Windows. Novell is going after Office, Microsoft's other cash cow product and arguably another monopoly given the product's enormous market share (Remember, I'm not a lawyer),"said Jupiter's Wilcox.
Novell gets a little money out of MS and they pull
this crap. They ran Wordperfect into the ground.
They didn't have a good product in the first place
and never improved on it. They might have had a
50% share at the time, but things change. MS Word
was better and they spent the $$ to make it better.
Novell didn't improve its product and sold it. MS
needs to fight this one and crush them on this
issue. Novell needs a head slap ....
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|Has anybody actually used it? I don't mean once, I mean as a part of doing business. I have some customers who use it, it's always causing me problems, they won't upgrade or change because they are afraid of the learning curve, and they cry when their other apps don't work. It's too bad that their product went down the crapper, but hey, maybe WP knew it was going over to Corel, and commited hari-kari.
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|I think you mean Greedy.
Your title makes no sense even if you did spell it right.
Novell deserves what? Are you drunk?
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|???
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|I was over at ZDNet (the horror! The Horror!) reading all the anti-MS nonsense and you wouldn't believe the crap. "MS should be punished because they killed WordPerfect". Um, that was their job. No one is in this business for altruism - they're there to make a profit and destroy the competition. It was seriously amusing to see all the old diehard keystroke-combos-from-hell users bashing away with might and main. Apart from the fact that they were seriously dating themselves in terms of attitude (“oh God, why won't the old glory days of DOS, Novell and a simpler life return”), you had to wonder if anyone there was a recent user of the crap Corel sells or the garbage Novell put out when it gutted the program after acquiring it in its never ending quest of “MS p**** envy”.
There's a reason why MS has the market share they have: their product is useful, reasonably solid and fast. There's a reason WordPerfect failed: it didn't keep pace with the times, it had pathetic quality control, it was bloated and slow and just couldn't get its act together. The company's "port" to Windows was a disastr and that set the pace for what followed.
So, in typical “Uncle Ray” Noorda fashion (he's long since left Novell but his lessons apparently remain, namely a legacy of sour grapes and “sue 'em if ya can't beat 'em in the marketplace”), the company drags out the old chestnut and bleats "pity me pity me" in a lawsuit, hoping some damned fool judge will throw it a crumb to prop up its failing network business (let's face it - Novell has been sinking for years due to Unix and Microsoft and every teaspoon of capital counts these days to a company that's bleeding out).
What a laugh track.
For the record, I don't use MS Office any more. This is being typed in OpenOffice which is small, fast, efficient and nowhere near as intrusive as MS Office is to my system (we won't get intpo how Wordperfect out and out polluted a system back during Novell's tenure). Now, there's a product that pulled itself from the ashes (it started life as an OS/Who, er, OS/2 app a decade or so ago) and seriously got its act together. It has great quality control too. In short, it's everything WordPerfect for Windows never was or could be.
And you know the best part? It did it without resorting to whining, snivelling and crying “pity me, pity me”.
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|I'm just tired of all these people wasting precious time in court with bogus cases.
Yeah Microsoft is big. They got big because they had a good product and they learned how to market it. Why punish someone for that?
Look at Mozilla. IE has been a crappy browser for years and now Mozilla is having a great time taking all of the people that hate IE. If Word Perfect was better maybe they would have a better share of the market. I have used both MS Word and Corel Word Perfect. Microsoft was always better; even in the DOS days.
Novell, Stick to Linux and shut the heck up about this crap. You don't even own Word Perfect anymore. What dummies.
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|I'm a long-time WordPerfect user and continue to use it for all my word processing, although I have MS Office on my computers as well.
Novell took over WordPerfect and trashed it. They mistreated the programmers, bled it for what it was worth, and by the time they sold it to Corel managed to lose almost all of its market share to MS Office. Sure, MS is hard to beat, but realistically Novell didn't even try.
Corel has done a decent job keeping it afloat, but bought it too late to recover market share. Novell is the guilty party in my view.
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|I am not a M$ lover, let me just state that for the record. In fact, their software has infuriated me at times. Having said that, I have used, (either by choice or because it was all there was at a particular location/employer,) their software for many, many, many years.
(I have also had occasion to use others: Linux, Unix, OS2, WordPerfect, Lotus etc etc. In fact, I am typing this through my Firefox browser.)
The truth of the matter (IMHO) is M$ does make, 'generally' better software, even if they sometimes have to pitch it at the lowest common denominator. Sometimes, admittedly, they make turkeys, like Internet Explorer, but then they use business tactics, marketing, and general skullduggery to turn it into a success anyway!
It would appear, to my British eye, that the commercial legal framework in the States and now, more recently, the EU, is set-up to pander to the losers in commerce by dint of placing totally unfair laws in the way of shrewd (read: dirty & machiavellian) business-persons.
I know that sounds extremely inflammatory, and i'll probably be flamed to hell and back but come on... if one business person says to another one:
"This is my product, that is your product, if you want to sell yours WITH mine, don't put 'their' product with it. Otherwise, no deal."
...what the heck is the harm? No-one is forcing B to sell A's product. It's just that A & B BOTH know that, thanks to A's skullduggery and shrewd marketing, that more of B's product will be sold if they are sold with A's product too!
The three businesses in the scenario (the third being, the whining, losers,) are all IN BUSINESS, not in government, nor are they CHARITIES. So long as one business does not use violence, theft, murder, rape, insider dealing, or anything else that truly HARMS the consumer, the taxman or each other, then WHAT THE HELL IS THE PROBLEM?!
Government should be in place to protect the nation from physical harm and little else. As it is, it also wishes to foist education, welfare, media regulation etc etc etc yada yada yada on us and there really is little else we can do about that. But it goes too far when it tells one company, "you are too successful, you should not be setting rules by which your products are sold." I qualify the statement with 'too successsful' because less successful companies do it ALL THE TIME! (Look around you, how many stores/retailers/dealers sell BOTH competitors' products? In all industries? Some, yes, but not all. Now ask yourself why?)
So, when company C finally starts suffering and needs to inject either capital into it's coffers or raise it's profile a little, out come the long-held records, (which it strangely did not act on before,) and the run bleating to the nanny state.
GROW UP CORPORATE AMERICA!
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen! (Or, alternatively, make a better product, or sell it better...)
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|mamapapaxp, very well stated. I can't add anything nor dispute anything you posted. very well done. .
Its refreshing to see someone external from the USA see it from your point of view. Its about time, people realize you don't have to love Microsoft to respect the way they do business. Its not cheap, its just business.
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|"or anything else that truly HARMS the consumer"
Monopolies or lack of competition HARM the consumer because there is no reason for them not to overcharge. Only when there is healthy competition, or government regulation, are people protected from high prices. They're not going to give you a fair price out of goodwill- only if having a competitor forces them to do so.
If you corner the market in diamonds or anything else, you are a scoundrel and the government had better keep you in line.
Just look at cable bills for an example of what kind of ridiculousness happens when the government neglects its role of regulating or breaking up monopolies.
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|To the person talking about cable bills:
Had a look at your phone bills after the baby bells were spawned years ago? They went UP after the plethora of baby bells hit the markets.
So much for "government regulation". Remember, they're the *government* which translates to "a massive entrenched bureauocracy". In short, they couldn't spell "business" to save their lives.
Also, if you think competition is alive and well in the marketplace, you're delusional. It ain't and hasn't been for a while. The oil companies raise and lower prices in lockstep. The hydro companies do the same. The phone companies are no different. The government can do zero because the corporations own the government. Hell, you just went to war over big business, never mind the silly rhetoric about "weapons of a** destruction" (no that's not a typo); it was and is all about oil and contracts. Also, look at the "special interest" lobbies in the US.
Wake up and smell the coffee. It's all about illusion to the consumer.
Let it be - the market invariably decides.
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|Here Here!!!
Of course, it's the same with unions. Unions protect the weak and discourage the strong from standing out. "Don't do that, you will make all our other workers look bad". So much for the american dream and capitalist America.
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|I think Microsoft has been clever in their marketing strategy. Perhaps they hired better strategists. To be honest, I think both parties did wrong.
Anyway, who talks about Lotus SmartSuite or Corel's WordPerfect today? Not that I support Microsoft, but if I were to use non-MS products, then send my file over to MS users, they tell me..... hey why is the document 9 pages when u said it was 8 pages? It is the incompatibilities that people are concerned about. There may be converters but they are not perfect.
To the old users or computer illiterate ones, do you think they bother learning how to use 2 different systems? Think about the users first! Imagine this, "I thought the Page Setup lies under the File menu. Oops... it's not there".
I am a tech geek. I love learning new things so using OpenOffice is not a problem. Love it... This office suite needs a major boost in popularity. For now however, MS Office will continue to be the dominant player.
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