Gates takes stand in suit against Microsoft

Jim Urquhart / AP

Microsoft co-founder and Chairman Bill Gates arrives at the federal courthouse in Salt Lake City, Utah, Monday, to testify in a lawsuit brought against the company by Novell Inc.

By msnbc.com news services

Microsoft's billionaire Chairman Bill Gates has taken the witness stand in a Utah federal court, where he is defending the company he co-founded against a $1 billion lawsuit filed by a onetime rival.

Gates, wearing a gray suit and a yellow tie, was the first witness to testify Monday as Microsoft lawyers presented their case in the trial that's been ongoing in federal court in Salt Lake City for about a month.

(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

Utah-based Novell Inc. sued Microsoft in 2004, claiming the Redmond, Wash.-based company violated U.S. antitrust laws through its arrangements with other computer makers when it launched the Windows 95 operating system. Novell says it was later forced to sell WordPerfect for a $1.2 billion loss. Corel now owns it.

The company argues that Gates ordered company engineers to reject WordPerfect as a Windows 95 word processing application because he feared it was too good. WordPerfect once had nearly 50 percent of the market for computer writing programs, but its share plummeted to less than 10 percent as Microsoft's own office programs took hold.

Microsoft is seeking a dismissal, calling the claims groundless.

As he took the stand Gates offered background on how he helped found the computer company in 1975 when he was just 19.

"We thought everybody would have a personal computer on every desk and in every home," he said. "We wanted to be there and be the first."

(The Associated Press contributed to this story.)

Source: http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/21/8931539-gates-takes-stand-in-suit-against-microsoft

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