Microsoft’s short lived break from the “Vista Capable”
lawsuit did not quite see the result the software giant was hoping for. After Microsoft’s appeal of a decision to
allow the lawsuit to continue as class action, the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the 9th Circuit on Monday denied to hear it.
A statement issued to BetaNews by Microsoft legal spokesperson, Jack Evans, claimed, "The Ninth Circuit's decision not to accept our
request for interim review is not a ruling on the merits of our case.
We look forward to presenting all of the facts on what the district
court itself said is a novel claim."
The suit was filed following and accusation against
Microsoft for falsely displaying the “Vista Capable” sticker on Window’s
machines that lacked in hardware support. The machines were able to run Windows Vista Home Basic, but failed to
handle the other versions. This caused
uproar especially with the crowd looking forward to the Vista Aero Glass
feature.
It would seem this case is cut and dry with Microsoft misleading
customers, but the argument prolonging the case consists of Microsoft’s use of
two different stickers. Machines that
could only run Home Basic were planted with the “Vista Capable” sticker, while machines
that could run all versions were labeled “Vista Ready.”
With the case moving forward as class action and the
continuation of discovery, Microsoft could see a rough path ahead if new
information comes to light. Over the period
of the suit, emails quoting Microsoft’s execs bashing the operating system on
their low grade machines as well as the company lowering Vista’s graphics
requirements so that Intel can make a few extra dollars on its motherboards has
already made this case very intriguing.
With the discovery of new information, Microsoft could take
a lot larger hit than they first expected.
At this point, whether Microsoft wins or loses all the information
released and to be released could really put a damper on software sales and
future contracts.
The remainder of the case should be quite entertaining if we
see what we have been seeing. No other
information has been released as of yet.