Microsoft To Face New Antitrust Lawsuit Filed by Founder of Go

Microsoft doesn't seem to be able to shake off its image of a monopolistic giant that wants absolutely everything for itself. After resolving its previous problems with the Federal Government and accepting to pay 775 million dollars as damages to IBM as a result of the court ruling in its famous antitrust lawsuit, now the company from Redmond seems to be facing the same problems once again.

Thus, yesterday, according to the New York Times, the founder of Go Corporation, a maker of a portable computer operating system in the 1990's, has filed papers in the US against Microsoft, alleging anti-competitive behavior.

The lawsuits, which accuse Microsoft of attempting to "kill" Go in the early 1990's, are based on allegations that go back to the 1980s when Go Corp was formed by S. Jerrold Kaplan, a former Chief Scientist at Lotus Development, who wanted to create a new pen-controlled operating system.

It looks like this lawsuit follows the same pattern as Microsoft's previous antitrust cases. According to Mr. Kaplan, Microsoft engineers visited Go and were shown the company's technology. Later on, something very similar to Go's technology appeared in the Windows Tablet Edition.

One important part of this suit is related to the behavior of Microsoft's engineers after they had been given access to Go's technology under a nondisclosure agreement. The lawsuit refers to Microsoft documents suggesting that the engineers were gathering information to help Microsoft develop a competing product.

A Microsoft spokeswoman, Stacy Drake, said, "These claims are 20 years old and they were baseless then and they are baseless now."

Mr. Kaplan declined any comments regarding this lawsuit. However, in a testimony last year on a class-action filed against Microsoft in Minnesota, Mr. Kaplan stated that he was shocked to discover the evidence suggesting that Microsoft had been plotting to defeat Go. Also, he added in an interview that "This was a corporate mugging that went uncorrected and unknown".

In 1994, Go was acquired by AT&T and merged with the company's EO portable computer unit. Mr Kaplan bought back the assets of Go from Lucent which which had retained the assets when it was spun off from A.T.& T.