Iowa has filed what will shape up to be one of the largest anti-trust cases in history against convicted monopolist, Microsoft. From the article: "Des Moines lawyer Roxanne Conlin will present her class-action lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. as a series of nine stories designed to show how Microsoft harmed Iowa consumers by destroying competition, Conlin said Friday morning as she began opening statements... ...She used a variety of computer-generated illustrations during the presentation, including one that showed 15 separate icons, each representing what she said was an illegal action taken by Microsoft in pursuit of its bid to become and remain a monopoly. The icons had titles like “exclusionary contract,” “technical sabotage,” “buying out the competition,” “espionage,” and “deception and misinformation.” Conlin told the jurors she had struggled with how to present this very complicated case to them, saying she had considered a chronological presentation, or grouping Microsoft’s actions according to tactics and presenting it that way." Get the rest over at the Des Moines Register.
Wonder how she's going to win the buying out competitors point when any transaction they do would have to go before anti-trust regulators who obviously approved them.
Microsoft has used predatory monopolistic tactics against so many companies in the past that it shouldn't be a problem. I was just thinking about Stacker earlier this morning; Microsoft ripped them off in a horrible way, eventually leading to the collapse of that company. They are by no means an isolated case.
I'm not saying they haven't hurt companies, but using the point of "buying the competition" I can't see as a valid reason as the US government has allowed those transactions to go through and didn't fell as though they warranted an anti-trust violation.
