antitrust

Buzz Out Loud 721: Copy an MP3, lose your house

It's scary legal day today between the Pro-IP act and the Los Angeles County copyright laws. At least R2D2 can safely project legitimate DVD movies on our walls. Even if they're prison walls. Also, old Apple PowerBook power supplies are sparking up a storm. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 721

House overwhelmingly passes controversial Pro-IP Act http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080508-house-overwhelmingly-passes-controversial-pro-ip-act.html

Infringement ‘detrimental to the public health, safety’ http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/09/0029224

Windows XP SP3 sows havoc, users complain http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/ operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207600950… Read more

Microsoft to appeal EC's $1.39 billion fine

Microsoft announced Friday it's appealing the $1.39 billion fine the European Commission imposed for failure to comply with its historic 2004 antitrust order against the Redmond giant.

Microsoft filed an application with the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg, seeking to annul the Commission's decision from late February, in which it imposed a fine of 899 million Euros, or $1.39 billion, against Microsoft.

"We are filing this appeal in a constructive effort to seek clarity from the court. We will not be saying anything further," Microsoft said in a statement.

When the Commission imposed … Read more

AMD revives antitrust allegations against Intel

Advanced Micro Devices on Monday resurrected its old allegations against Intel, although it kept the salacious details under a thick layer of black ink.

AMD filed a heavily redacted brief as part of its ongoing antitrust case against Intel, saying it has new, specific evidence of Intel's misconduct but blacking out almost all of the evidence in the brief. AMD filed suit in 2005, claiming that Intel has used intimidation and predatory pricing to coerce PC and server vendors into excluding AMD's chips from their products. Intel denies all charges.

In its initial complaint, AMD claimed to have evidence of Intel's wrongdoing … Read more

RAMBUS: The battle over hold-ups in industry standard setting

If you help your industry adopt your patented technology as a standard and then sue companies that use the standard, bad things can happen. You might lose your patent rights, be sued or prosecuted for antitrust violations, unfair competition, and fraud. Even if you ultimately win your case at trial ... or on appeal ... the cost of getting mired in allegations of abusing the standards process can be high. Rambus, a memory design and patent licensing company, presents a case study in how costly and time consuming standards-related patent disputes can be. The cost to the industry can be even higher, … Read more

Report: Yahoo, Google talk with DOJ on ad test

Yahoo and Google have both spoken to regulators about the joint test underway in which Google is serving up ads for a small number of Yahoo's search queries, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

"We informed the Justice Department before we launched this test and we have been responsive to their questions about it," Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich told Reuters. Yahoo had a similar comment to the wire service.

Yahoo offered little new detail about the test during its quarterly conference call Tuesday, but positioned it as one of several things the company was exploring as part of efforts … Read more

Sirius-XM, Microsoft-Yahoo, and White House 2009: The predictions

CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache wrote this article.

It may seem that the Bush administration's approval of the Sirius-XM merger should invite a rush of deals before the next presidential administration, which could be Democratic and therefore more hostile to billion-dollar corporate combinations.

After all, Democrats have spent years alleging that the Bush crowd is overly merger-happy--with the corollary implication that a Clinton or Obama administration won't be. One 2006 column in the New York Times charged that there was a "lack of interest in antitrust enforcement these days," and one frequent … Read more

Apple, Safari, iPhones and the reek of Microsoft

Last week Apple decided to try its hand at bundling. Tying is just around the corner.

Apple already has a place on the desktops of many Windows users through iTunes. Like Microsoft before it, Apple figured this was a great Trojan Horse to start pushing its other software. Like Microsoft before it, Apple stepped over the line, as John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla, suggested:

What Apple is doing now with their Apple Software Update on Windows is wrong. It undermines the trust relationship great companies have with their customers, and that's bad -- not just for Apple, but for the security of the whole Web.

John then goes on to say he's not against Apple's use of iTunes to push the Safari browser. He's wrong. Larry Dignan suggests John's complaint stems from Mozilla trying to protect its lucrative search relationship with Google. He's wrong, too.

If a browser had anything to do with iTunes, this wouldn't be so egregiously bad. But it doesn't. No, Apple's move bears the imprint of a would-be monopolist that cares more about its market position than its customers. I'm guessing it has little to do with Safari and much to do with...the iPhone.… Read more

U.S. Supreme Court rejects Microsoft antitrust appeal

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied a Microsoft appeal to an antitrust case that dates back to Novell's desktop PC software business in the mid-1990s.

The move leaves standing a lower court ruling that says Novell can sue Microsoft under federal antitrust laws. Novell argued that Microsoft used its monopoly power to sink Novell's QuattroPro spreadsheet and WordPerfect word processor.

The court had no comment and Chief Justice John Roberts abstained because he is a Microsoft shareholder, according to the Associated Press.

"Microsoft specifically targeted WordPerfect and Novell's other office productivity applications because they … Read more

Windows 7 gets an outside tester: The government

The headline was updated at 3 p.m. to note that it is several states, not the U.S. department of Justice, that are overseeing the compliance of Vista and future Windows versions with the consent decree.

Microsoft has said precious little about Windows 7, but it has provided at least one outsider with an early test version of the forthcoming operating system.

The software maker confirmed in a court filing last week that it has provided a test version of Windows 7 to the technical committee helping to oversee Microsoft's compliance with the U.S. antitrust settlement.

Windows … Read more