Microsoft Corp will pay up to US$1.1 billion to settle lawsuits alleging the world's biggest software maker violated California antitrust and unfair competition laws.
Purchasers of Microsoft products will receive vouchers good for buying any manufacturer's personal computer and software that runs on it, Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said. Two-thirds of unclaimed funds will go to California schools in low-income areas and the rest will revert to Microsoft.
Microsoft, which faces similar lawsuits in 16 states and the District of Columbia, is trying to put its legal entanglements behind it after a federal appeals court in 2001 found the company illegally protected its Windows operating system monopoly. The ruling is binding in many of the cases, making it easier for plaintiffs to win their case, legal analysts have said.
"This agreement marks a significant step forward in our work to resolve our antitrust legal issues," Smith said on a conference call.
"[Friday's] settlement resolves the cases that represented by a very substantial margin the largest group of lawsuits."
Microsoft is still calculating how much of the US$1.1 billion it ultimately will pay, Smith said. The cost will depend on the number of people who file eligible claims and other factors.
The company set aside US$660 million to cover antitrust lawsuits and plans to say whether it expects to adjust that figure on a Jan. 16 conference call previously scheduled to discuss earnings.
People who bought Microsoft operating systems or programs for word processing, spreadsheets for use in California between Feb.
18, 1995 and Dec. 15, 2001 are eligible for a voucher, Smith said.
Vouchers will range from US$5 to US$29 depending on the type of product consumers purchased.
Eugene Crew, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs, said about 13 million consumers and businesses had joined the suit.
"Without a doubt this is the largest settlement of any case under California antitrust law," Crew said in an interview.
Microsoft was dealt a setback in the case in October when a California judge ruled that the US appellate court's June 2001 ruling could be used in the consumers' suit.
Microsoft had sought to keep the findings from being given to the jury in the California case. Microsoft agreed to settle the US case after the appeals court ruling.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to