Corel Ousts Microsoft On DOJ Desktops

When Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers need to spell-check the documents they prepare for their massive antitrust case against Microsoft Corp., they all may soon be using software from Microsoft rival Corel Corp.

Corel, based in the Canadian capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, today
announced a three-year, multi-million-dollar licensing deal that
will put its Corel WordPerfect Office 2000 suite on over 55,000 DOJ
desktops, some 16,000 of them using the WordPerfect Law Office
version of the software designed specifically for legal eagles.

In an antitrust lawsuit begin in 1998, 19 states joined the DOJ in
alleging that the Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft employed a range
of illegal and anti-competitive practices to monopolize the PC
operating systems market. While a "finding of fact" from Judge
Thomas Penfield Jackson in December buoyed the DOJ's case, the
legal wrestling is far from over. If a final ruling from Jackson
expected later this month goes against Microsoft, it would just be
the beginning of a new round of evidence preceding any decision on
sanctions.

Corel said Software House International, a value-added software
reseller headquartered in Somerset, N.J., and with sales offices
across the country, was the contractor for the DOJ bid.

In the past, Corel has complained about gaining access to US
government departments to sell products that compete with
Microsoft's Office suite.

In December, the company filed a lawsuit in a US District Court in
Washington accusing the Department of Labor with unlawful
procurement practices after the department dropped its remaining
WordPerfect software in favor of standardizing on Microsoft's
offering. Corel claimed the department's "sole-source" approach
unfairly locks out Microsoft competitors.

Corel can be found on the Web at http://www.corel.com.

Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com.