Microsoft uses Apple's case

Microsoft cited a 2008 legal victory by rival Apple as it asked a federal court to remove antitrust claims brought by a company that sells Xbox 360 accessories containing video game cheats, reports Computerworld.

Microsoft denied it has a monopoly in the video game market as it competes with Sony, Nintendo and others, arguing that antitrust laws don't apply to single-brand aftermarket devices like the Xbox, where customers know, or agree to in advance, that they would be able to buy accessories only from the company that made the original product.

Apple used the same arguments to respond to antitrust allegations in 2008, when Florida clone maker Psystar's lawsuit accused Apple of owning a monopoly in the single-brand Mac market. In that case, US District Court Judge William Alsup dismissed Psystar's charges.

American fantasy fiction author Ursula Le Guin is to submit a petition to a US judge signed by 365 other writers opposing the legal settlement that would allow Google to scan and sell millions of books online, writes AFP.

Google's vast digital book-scanning project agreed to pay $125 million to resolve outstanding claims and establish an independent 'Book Rights Registry' which would provide revenue from sales and advertising to authors and publishers who agree to digitise their books.

In the petition, Le Guin says the settlement was negotiated by the Authors Guild "without consultation with any other group of authors or American authors as a whole. The Guild cannot and does not speak for all American writers," says Le Guin. "Its settlement cannot be seen as reflecting the will or interest of any group but the Guild."

Microsoft legal officials called on Congress to create new laws that would give data stored in the cloud the same protections as data stored on a PC, states Computerworld.

Brad Smith, senior-vice president and general counsel at Microsoft, says that laws now protecting electronic data were written in the early days of PCs. "We need Congress to modernise the laws and adapt them to the cloud," says Smith.

He cites the city of City of Los Angeles' move to implement Google Apps is one example of how cloud providers must tweak contracts to win business. The city's $7 million agreement with Google to move 30 000 employees to Google Apps included an unlimited damages provision that makes the Google legally responsible for the release of data in violation of a non-disclosure agreement.