Microsoft: £25m Lawsuit From Pixart SRL Surfaces After Eighteen Months

Pixart SRL, an Open Source company has alleged Microsoft with dominating the Operating System market in Argentina through its Windows Starter Kit. This lawsuit was filed against Microsoft almost 18 months back in September 2008. It has surfaced only recently because the lawyers at Pixart SRL have claimed that the case has a better chance of getting considered now.

In an exclusive interview with eWEEK Europe, Dr. Uriel Blustien has said,

It is a suit filed in the ‘National commission for Fair Trading’, for an alleged abuse of dominant position. The Commission in is the process of deciding whether the trial will take place.

Pixart SRL has charged Microsoft for bad marketing practices which has dampened the market share for its products. Pixart SRL is the manufacturer of Rxart, a debian based Linux distribution. The Microsoft Starter Edition, which is essentially a stripped down version of Windows XP comes pre-installed in many PCs and this has affected Rxart sales adversely.

Pixart claims to have 320,000 users in 2005 but the number decreased steadily owing to the pre-installed hardware shipping with Windows XP. Further, offering their Operating System at a competitive price wipes out all competition in the market for Microsoft. Although, the lawyers at Pixart hope to win this case, Microsoft can drag it on by applying to a higher court.

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