| Companies in a monopoly position are more limited in what they are allowed to do. Something that might seem like a usual business practice to a small fish like you or me, might be illegal for a monopoly. Microsoft's lawyers tried using your argument to get partial summary judgement in Caldera v. Microsoft. They lost, and they lost the appeal. Here's Caldera's claim, quoting the summary in the US District Court judgement: > In addition to its improper vaporware and FUD campaigns, Caldera alleges that Microsoft also forced OEMs away from DR DOS 5.0 by what plaintiff refers to as the "licensing triple-whammy," which refers to (1) per processor licenses, (2) minimum commitments subject to forfeiture, and (3) increased license duration. Per processor licensing agreements required an OEM to pay Microsoft a royalty on every machine the OEM shipped regardless whether the machine contained MS-DOS or a different operating system. This is in contrast to a per system licensing agreement, which required OEMs to pay a royalty on only those computers shipped with MS-DOS installed. The use of per processor agreements is argued by plaintiff to be Microsoft's most effective single weapon against DR DOS. Plaintiff alleges that DRI had no realistic chance to license DR DOS to OEMs under a per processor license with Microsoft. It would make no sense for an OEM to install DR DOS when it had already paid for MS-DOS on every machine. Microsoft contends that OEMs were free to depart from the per processor licensing scheme, and that price differentials between license types were "relatively minor." However, plaintiff points to the depositions of several OEM executives who testified that even slight price differentials between the per processor and per system licenses meant that only the per processor license was financially viable. This case was specifically about illegal use of monopoly power, which is why you can read: > By 1988 Microsoft had obtained a monopoly position in the DOS market. For purposes of the present motions, Microsoft does not dispute the contention that it has such a monopoly in the operating systems market. Without that assumption they could not have gotten summary judgement. |