14 DAY TRIAL // A United States judge from a District Court has ruled that Datel, a company making videogame console accessories, can go ahead with an antitrust case it brought against Microsoft, in which the creator of the Xbox 360 home gaming console is accused of using its dominating position to block access to the accessory market for its platform.
Daniel Asimow, a lawyer with firm Howard Rice and the man representing Datel, stated, “We’re gratified that the case will proceed and Datel looks forward to reestablishing the benefits of competition in the accessory market for all Xbox 360 users.” Microsoft is accused of “predatory conduct” by Datel because of a firmware update that made the Xbox 360 incompatible with the latter’s peripherals.
The judge also said that the way the Redmond-based company worded its license agreement in order to mandate the use of first-party peripherals has too ambiguous terms.
Microsoft based it defense on the case of, ironically, Apple vs. Psystar, when a judge said that Apple, through the licensing deal for the Mac OS operating system, had a right to restrict its use in the creation of Mac clones. It also filed a lawsuit against Datel claiming that it violated its patents in creating its data storage units for the Xbox 360.
It's not the first time that Datel is engaged in a court battle with one of the big console manufacturers. In the initial months of 2009, Sony, the creator of the PlayStation 3 and of the PlayStation Portable, sued the company because of the Lite Blue Tool, a device that acted like a battery for the PSP and allowed a user to launch the boot code from an external storage device. Sony claimed that the device allowed for piracy on its products and Datel withdrew it from sale after the suit was announced.