The Anti-Trust Case Against Microsoft

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Term Paper Title	The Anti-Trust Case Against Microsoft
# of Words	2276
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	9.1

The Anti-Trust Case Against Microsoft

The Anti-Trust Case Against Microsoft

     Since 1990, a battle has raged in United States courts between the
United States government and the Microsoft Corporation out of Redmond,
Washington, headed by Bill Gates. What is at stake is money. The federal
government maintains that Microsoft's monopolistic practices are harmful to
United States citizens, creating higher prices and potentially downgrading
software quality,  and should therefore be stopped, while Microsoft and its
supporters claim that they are not breaking any laws, and are just doing good
business.
     Microsoft's antitrust problems began for them in the early months of
1990(Check 1), when the Federal Trade Commission began investigating them for
possible violations of the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Acts,(Maldoom 1) which
are designed to stop the formation of monopolies. The investigation continued on
for the next three years without resolve, until Novell, maker of DR-DOS, a
competitor of Microsoft's MS-DOS, filed a complaint with the Competition
Directorate of the European Commission in June of 1993. (Maldoom 1) Doing this
stalled the investigations even more, until finally in August of 1993, (Check
1)the Federal Trade Commission decided to hand the case over to the Department
of Justice. The Department of Justice moved quickly, with Anne K. Bingaman, head
of the Antitrust Division of the DOJ, leading the way.(Check 1) The case was
finally ended on July 15, 1994, with Microsoft signing a consent
settlement.(Check 1)
     The settlement focused on Microsoft's selling practices with computer
manufacturers. Up until now, Microsoft would sell MS-DOS and Microsoft's other
operating systems to original equipment manufacturers (OEM's) at a 60% discount
if that OEM agreed to pay a royalty to Microsoft for every single computer that
they sold (Check 2) regardless if it had a Microsoft operating system installed
on it or not. After the settlement, Microsoft would be forced to sell their
operating systems according to the number of computers shipped with a Microsoft
operating system installed, and not for computers that ran other operating
systems. (Check 2)
     Another practice that the Justice Department accused Microsoft of was
that Microsoft would specify a minimum number of minimum number of operating
systems that the retailer had to buy, thus eliminating any chance for another
operating system vendor to get their system installed until the retailer had
installed all ...

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