Stratton Oakmont Inc., an investment banking firm, sued Prodigy
Services Co. and a subscriber, David Lusby, over alleged defamation of
Stratton Oakmont, its president and a firm the company took public,
posted by Lusby on Prodigy's Money Talk bulletin board.
The suit requests $100 million in money damages and another $100 million
in punitive damages. (San Jose Mercury News, November 11, 1994, 1F; New
York Times, November 12, 1994, p.27, and November 16, 1994, C1.)
IBM and Seagate Technology Inc. settled a trade secret lawsuit between
them over a researcher, Peter Bonyhard, who went from IBM to Seagate.
Bonyhard, a manager of an IBM project in magneto-resistive heads,
accepted early retirement from IBM and went to
work for Seagate. The parties also settled a lawsuit over another
employee, Brendan Hegarty. (San Jose Mercury News, November 16, 1994,
1G.)
Microsoft Corp. and Intuit Inc. confirmed they received a second
request for information from the Justice Department on their proposed
merger. A Silicon Valley law firm, Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati,
filed a brief with the Justice Department on behalf of clients
that declined to be named, arguing that Microsoft's acquisition of
Intuit is anticompetitive in the present market for personal finance
software and its future implications are even more troubling. (New York
Times, November 23, 1994, C5; San Jose Mercury News,
November 23, 1994, 1E.)
UNI-CGS Inc., a California computer packager and reseller, filed an
antitrust suit against Microsoft Corp. accusing it of monopolizing
personal computer software by licensing its operating system to only
large manufacturers. (San Jose Mercury News, November 12,
1994, 13D.)
CyberLex (tm) is published solely as an educational service. The author,
a California attorney, is Executive Editor of LEXIS COUNSEL CONNECT
CALIFORNIA. He may be contacted at jrosen03@reach.com or
cyberlaw@cyberlaw.com; questions and comments may
be posted on America Online (go to keyword "CYBERLAW"). Copyright (c)
1994 Jonathan Rosenoer; All Rights Reserved. CyberLex is a trademark of
Jonathan Rosenoer. CyberLex on the World Wide Web
(http://www.portal.com/~cyberlaw/cylw_home.html) is made
possible with support from Portal Communications Co., an Internet
provider based in Cupertino, CA (ph. 408/973-9111).