In a mixed ruling today, U.S. District Court Judge J. Frederick Motz ruled in favor of Be, Inc against Microsoft who wanted their antitrust lawsuit dismissed.

One aspect of Be's case which helped the ruling was the bootloader aspect. Motz said "Regarding the inability for dual booting to get it off the ground, there is sufficient allegation for that claim to go forward,". Motz also stated, and i quote:

"I am absolutely persuaded that there is enough to support a Section 1 claim" of the Be suit, Motz said. He upheld Be's claims that Microsoft drove the company out of the PC operating system business "through a series of illegal exclusionary and anticompetitive acts designed to maintain its monopoly in the Intel-compatible PC operating system market and created exclusive dealing arrangements with PC OEMs prohibiting the sale of PCs with multiple preinstalled operating systems"

Don't forget, this isn't the case itselt, this is just to see if there _is_ a case or not. So far so good. Microsoft lawyers will appeal though.

Motz also rulled against Microsoft and in favor of Burst.com in another antitrust lawsuit. Regarding Sun's case, Motz ruled in favour of Microsoft by dismissing Sun's first two counts in the suit, saying though that "There are serious issues that arise on the tying claims,"

Let's see what comes out of this. I know many of us (me included) are rooting for Be, Inc, hoping they get some compensation from what they suffered due to Microsoft's practices.

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