Fun_People Archive
21 Aug
Microsoft Update


Date: Mon, 21 Aug 95 15:40:31 -0700
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Microsoft Update

Forwarded-by: lanih@info.SIMS.Berkeley.EDU (Lani Herrmann)
Forwarded-by: cherrmann@wpo.borland.com

[New York City] - PC Week this week leaked rumors
of a new Microsoft Network service planned for
rollout next year.  The new service, Microsoft
Judges, is a service designed to automatically
hear and rule on civil lawsuits.  The service will
be available to users of Microsoft Litigation '95
who have Microsoft Network accounts.

Users will be able to user Microsoft Litigation
'95 to submit pleadings and supporting documents
to a Microsoft Network agent called a Judge, which
will rule on the merits of the case.

Based on cumulative histories of 296,878,436 civil
cases across 8,792 municipal, state and federal
jurisdictions, Microsoft Judges maintains the most
extensive database of decision criteria in legal
history.  "We worked hard to include a wide
variety of cases from all jurisdictions," said
Microsoft product manager Roy Bean.

Microsoft Judges offers a bewildering array of
case histories and is updated daily.  A general
query about familiy law reported both yesterday's
Susan Smith case and Solomon's
parent-identification test.

"It's more than I ever knew about the Law," says
retired Judge Wopner.  "I wish it was around when
I did daytime TV."

The new service promises to deliver final
judgements within 2.3 seconds of the last brief
being filed.  With turnaround on ordinary motions
in less than one tenth of a second, Microsoft
Judges has the potential to speed up the legal
system 200 times.  "This is a fantastic
service--it can really loosen up our legal
logjams," said Arthur Jensen of the law firm of
Fenton & East.

Concerns about the system's reliability were
dismissed by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
"I've been actively involved in the field tests
for Microsoft Judges--teaching the next generation
of judges, so to speak--and haven't run into a
single decision I wouldn't affirm in the Court
here."

In a related matter, West Publishing, Inc,
publisher of WESTLAW, the country's primary
franchised legal database company, filed for a
restraining order against Microsoft yesterday.
West claims in their suit that Microsoft employees
have downloaded 296,877,231 records from their
legal database since June 1994, making up the vast
majority of Microsoft's legal database.  The
remaining 1201 suits were filed against Microsoft
itself.

>>> Elizabeth Vinsel 07/27/95 10:28am >>>
Microsoft Announces New CD-ROM Software to Aid
Consumers In Suing Itself

(REDMOND) In an effort to make it easier for
computer users everywhere to file a law suit
against itself, Microsoft Corporation today
announced Microsoft Litigation '95, a multimedia
reference library complete with 139 frequently
used legal writs, briefs, templates and forms
which are accessible from within other programs
with a single click.

With this handy tool, a user will be able to
combine elements of the popular Microsoft Office
and Microsoft Office Professional desktop
productivity suites in conjunction with the
Litigation '95 CD-ROM package to quickly and
efficiently bring suit against Microsoft for a
variety of reasons, whether legitimate or
frivolous.

What is new this year:

Litigation Builder
 ------------------------
Located on the QuickSuit information retrieval
toolbar, Litigation
Builder provides instant access to an enormous
variety of case law and civil code from within any
program on the Windows platform.

Suit Wizards (tm)
 ------------------------
Suit Wizards (tm) guide the user through the many
mazes of 'legalese' required to bring suit against
Microsoft, whether in city, county, state,
Federal, Appellate, or Supreme Court.  Localized
versions of Litigation
'95 will provide for the equivalent of lawsuits in
any nation's format.

Year in Review
 -----------------------
The Year in Review section highlights lawsuits,
findings, settlements and other legal events of
the past year which affect Microsoft, including
the
Justice Department suit, Judge Sporkin's refusal
to approve the settlement and the Stacker suit.

All New Forms
 ----------------------
View more than 650 legal templates and forms from
around the world, 930 country -specific case law
findings, and 180 bar associations.  Also click a
Latin legal term to hear it pronounced.  Nothing
could make it easier for a non-lawyer to bring
suit against Microsoft.

More Multimedia Elements
 ---------------------------------------
Litigation '95 contains all new video for a total
of 45 clips, 150 new audio clips for a total of
five hours of sound, and 550 new images for a
total of 3,000 pictures. The law dictionary
contains more than 80,000 spoken pronunciations
(the feature can be turned off if desired).


[=] © 1995 Peter Langston []