“Microsoft Corp. developed policies stressing the systematic destruction of internal e-mails and other documents crucial to lawsuits it has faced in recent years, a California software company alleges,” Foster Klug reports for The Associated Press. “Burst.com, in court papers unsealed this week, also accuses Microsoft of destroying e-mails crucial to Burst’s lawsuit against the software giant even after the trial judge ordered it to retain the documents.”
“Burst had previously claimed that Microsoft deleted e-mails it needed for evidence. But the unsealed 50-page motion, filed Oct. 29, provides new details, Burst says, of ‘institutional policies’ by Microsoft ‘to make sure that incriminating documents disappeared.’ Burst is suing Microsoft for alleged anticompetitive behavior, saying Microsoft misappropriated the intellectual property behind its multimedia software after breaking off talks with Burst on a joint project,” Klug reports.
“Burst, according to the motion, wants the jury in the case to be told that Microsoft failed to retain important documents, so jurors should infer that the company did so because those documents were damaging. ‘Critical e-mails have been destroyed and will never be recovered. We’ve tried; they’re gone forever,’ said Burst’s lead attorney, Spencer Hosie. ‘This is the only remedy that’s left open to us,'” Klug reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft destroying evidence to protect themselves? Unthinkable! Microsoft making sure that incriminating documents crucial to lawsuits disappeared? Impossible! Microsoft employing anticompetitive behavior and misappropriating intellectual property? Preposterous! Other companies maybe, but not Microsoft, not the company that inspired the world with the wonderful Windows operating system and gifted the glorious Internet Explorer to Windows and even Mac users alike. It’s just too unbelievable!
“Other companies maybe, but not Microsoft, not the company that inspired the world with the wonderful Windows operating system and gifted the glorious Internet Explorer to Windows and even Mac users alike.”
ROTFLMFAO
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Microsoft? Who is that?
ha ha
MDN, I love the sarcasm. Beautiful!
Emails ??…. What emails ??
That’s unpossible.
This country’s economy would improve if those damn democratic judges would punish those small (and therefore evil!) corporations, and protect the God-fearing, hardworking people over at Microsoft! They’re honest! They’re geniuses! Everything they do is so new, and so honest. And, what’s more (so much more!) they’re windows don’t even look good- which proves that they aren’t supporting gay rights! Buy the ugly and move jobs overseas, and America can become again the nation it once was . . .
[using the ‘Bewildered’ look]
Huh?
Who?
What?
I don’t, umm…
I have never had sexual relations with… no, wait, that was something else…
What was the question again?
There is NO EVIDENCE of ANY wrongdoing. So there.
Microsoft is beginning to remind me of the SS Titanic for some reason…
What’s an email?
E-mails weren’t deleted intentionaly. They were deleted because of system error. That, on the other hand, is highly probable.
t!
I can’t seem to get worked up about this. Are companies meant to keep all emails ? Surely the company I work for isn’t going to want to store the email I sent yesterday with the PDF of the ticket I need to print to get myself into Apple Expo on Friday ? (My laser printer refuses to work and my inkjet, despite having plenty of black ink, refuses to print a black & white document because it has no colour ink. Grrr! No more Epsons for me).
Every now and then, I’ll delete all mails older than a year because they’re simply no use to me any more. Is the company meant to archive them somewhere ? What about spam ?
Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers!
Paper shredders, paper shredders, paper shredders,paper shredders, paper shredders, paper shredders, paper shredders, paper shredders, paper shredders, paper shredders, paper shredders, paper shredders, paper shredders, paper shredders, paper shredders, paper shredders, paper shredders!
Can we use “beleaguered” yet? Huh? Huh?
When Dubya recently appointed his buddy to head the Justice Deptartment, did he instruct the new guy to avoid hassling Microsoft? Didn’t need to say a word, did he? Those political contributions work wonders. Dubya, Bill G., monopolistic exploitation, and Longhorn — is this a great country or what.
The Enron defense to the rescue!
No one has yet to come up with the TRUE reason those emails disappeared – it was a VIRUS/Trojan variant, perpetrated upon M$ by malicious coders intent on protecting their environment which will allow them to continue to release more insidious virus code. They’re just protecting their own interests by protecting the status quo at M$…
Microsoft misappropriated the intellectual property behind its multimedia software after breaking off talks… says it all doesn’t it? There’s no innovation at M$ — they are incapable of any original thought.
How can you sleep at night knowing your company is built on theft of intellecllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll (damn these bluetooth keyboards … Stevie !!??) property?
Every now and then, I’ll delete all mails older than a year because they’re simply no use to me any more. Is the company meant to archive them somewhere ? What about spam ?
I read a previous article on this Microsoft thing before. Basically when a trial begins the judge asks who were the people involved in the dispute. For example in the Burst case… who working at MS was assigned to handle negotiations with Burst, etc… and who at Burst was involved with MS. The judge then orders all emails from those people to be retreived from during the relevant time span, and also if a certain person seems to be in a habit of showing up in these trials (I forgot what reasons are needed) the judge can order them to permanently save all emails in the future incase there is another case involving that person. Now what MS will do is when the judge asks them who was negotiating with Burst… they will say “Oh, it was Bob!” even though Bob was working on MS Office or whatever and never talked to the Burst people, so that way Bob’s emails are useless to the case. In the meantime… John’s emails (who was backstabbing Burst) are being purged.
That’s basically what I understand about this situation, the judge takes their word on good faith that they are turning over the emails he wants, but they are totally able to lie about who was involved and give him worthless information.
-Don.
One word:
Sarbannes-Oxley
You would think Burst would have a copy of any email needed for the trial since they where the ones sending and recieving them….as far as internal email Burst has no legal recorse. I’m shocked they are even trying this approch……cause it aint gonna work!
PS- I wish it would cripple MicroSHAFT they are holding back the computer industry in so many ways.
WE AT MICROSHAFT WOULD LOVE TO HELP YOU IN ANY WAY WE CAN, SO AT THIS TIME WE SUGGEST YOU BUY AN WELL DESIGNED IMAC.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME AND ATTENTION,
Billy G.
“From: George Bush
Nov 18, 04 – 12:42 am
This country’s economy would improve if those damn democratic judges would punish those small (and therefore evil!) corporations, and protect the God-fearing, hardworking people over at Microsoft! They’re honest! They’re geniuses! Everything they do is so new, and so honest. And, what’s more (so much more!) they’re windows don’t even look good- which proves that they aren’t supporting gay rights! Buy the ugly and move jobs overseas, and America can become again the nation it once was . . .”
Why blame Bush for that, its not like Clintons Justice Dept did anything else. Give blame where it is due and dont tack on blame where it has little or no standing. Both parties take $ from MS’s Political Action Committee, if you want something done about it vote for a third party like Nader’s.