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Exhibits to Microsoft's Cross Motion for Summary Judgment in Novell WordPerfect Case

By Pamela Jones et al.

I'm so glad you answered my question with a resounding Yes as to whether you wanted to get all the exhibits attached to Microsoft's Memorandum of Law [PDF] in support of Microsoft's cross motion for summary judgment in the Novell v. Microsoft antitrust litigation. We finally find out what Microsoft paid Caldera to settle the DrDOS litigation back in 2000: $280 million. We even get to read the settlement agreement. It's attached as an exhibit. Can you imagine? I'm so surprised.

The settlement terms were sealed for all these years, but lo and behold, now that mystery is solved. There are many more goodies on the list of exhibits.

We also find out what Caldera/Canopy then paid Novell from that $280 million: $35.5 million at first, and then after Novell successfully sued Canopy in 2004, Caldera's successor-in-interest on this matter, an additional $17.7 million, according to page 16 of the Memorandum.

Microsoft claims that Novell is not the real party in interest in this antitrust case, and so it can't sue Microsoft for the claims it has lodged against it, because, Microsoft says, Novell sold its antitrust claims to Caldera when it sold it DrDOS. So the exhibits are trying to demonstrate that Novell got paid in full, so to speak, via that earlier litigation. As a result, we get to read a number of documents from the Novell v. Canopy litigation. Novell responds [PDF] it retained its antitrust claims in the applications market.

So those are the parties' positions, but to us, this is a history. We have all the Microsoft exhibits for you, thanks to your kind donations, and there are a lot of exhibits. We'll be posting all the exhibits to the Novell response in opposition to this motion next, so keep in mind this is only half of the story.

Full post as published by Groklaw on November 24, 2009 (boomark / email).