MS destroyed evidence: claim
p2pnet.net News:- Microsoft has been accused of telling employees to destroy evidence relating to alleged patent and antitrust violations.
Burst.com, a small software company, filed a lawsuit against it, claiming Microsoft Corona streaming media product uses technologies and trade secrets misappropriated from Burst.com.
Now, court documents filed by Burst.com say Microsoft managers of told workers in 2000 to delete most or all e-mail after 30 days, says the IDG News Service, going on:
"At the time, the U.S. Department of Justice was in the midst of its antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, and the software giant faced dozens of class action lawsuits.
"Given this array of litigation, Microsoft had a concrete duty to preserve relevant documents," Burst.com’s lawyers are quoted as sahing in a motion filed in US District Court for the District of Maryland. "But it did not. Instead, it implemented … practices to make sure that incriminating documents disappeared."
IDG says Microsoft spokeswoman disputes Burst.com’s allegations.
"Burst.com was once a thriving company developing and marketing software to deliver audio / video streams over the Internet, accumulating world-wide patents along the way," wrote John Grey in a p2pnet piece.
"Its Burstware technology, often referred to as Faster-Than-Real-Time-Streaming, relies on proprietary compression algorithms and transmission bursts to protect end-users from changing IP network conditions. ‘Bursting’ is fundamentally different from HTTP streaming in so far as it relies on comprehensive, network-centric optimization with fail-over protection."
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See:-
destroy evidence – Burst.com says Microsoft destroyed evidence, IDG News Service, November 18, 2004
thriving company - Burst.com vs Microsoft, p2pnet, September 9, 2004
