Top US court backs Novell antitrust suit vs. Microsoft

WASHINGTON - The US Supreme Court turned away a Microsoft Corp. appeal, refusing to stop a multibillion-dollar Novell Inc. lawsuit that accuses the world's largest software maker of undermining the market for the WordPerfect program.

The justices, without comment, yesterday left intact a lower court decision that said Novell can sue Microsoft under federal antitrust law. Novell says Microsoft used the dominance of its Windows personal computer operating system to destroy the market for WordPerfect, the word processing program Novell owned during the mid-1990s.

"Microsoft specifically targeted WordPerfect and Novell's other office productivity applications because they threatened Microsoft's Windows monopoly," Novell argued in a court filing in Washington.

Microsoft contended in its appeal that Novell can't invoke the US antitrust laws because it didn't compete against Windows in the operating system market. Microsoft said the ruling allowing the suit, issued by the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, "significantly expands the class of potential plaintiffs permitted to seek treble damages under the antitrust laws."

Novell says the value of WordPerfect fell from $1.2 billion in May 1994 to $170 million in 1996, when the company sold the program to Corel Corp. Novell, based in Waltham, Mass., is seeking three times its losses.

WordPerfect's share of the word processing market fell to less than 10 percent in 1996 from almost 50 percent in 1990.