Microsoft India has been sued for abusing its monopoly in Windows and Microsoft Office suites with different price tags and same features.
Bill Gates has already said that Microsoft would not have existed for long without the Indian development centers. But now, looks like they are getting sued according to the Times of India. The claim has been made by a New Delhi law firm called Singhania & Partners.
The claim is that Microsoft has leveraged its monopoly in the market by selling identical versions of OEM software under volume based licensing of Windows Vista and Office 2007, but with the different price. This allegation has been in the rounds for a while, but now it has come to the court by this New Delhi based law firm.
The Singhania & Partners firm has also filed a petition to the Competition Commission of India in August 2010 for a similar suite, but has been rejected for the lack of evidence. But this time, they seem to have filed this case in COMPAT. The firm now has come with a strong pointers that proves that the Redmond based software company has been selling same featured software to volume licensed customers and OEM customers but with a different price.
They claim that:
[quote cite=” A spokesperson from the law firm”] The company charges much lower prices for new PCs, but charges up to double of that for software purchased separately for old PCs. [/quote]But the CCI has told that it could not find any evidence against Microsoft which could prove them to be playing monopoly. The law firm has also contended that it was not about Microsoft, but for their dominant position of selling same product at different price tags.
[Source: Times of India]