David L. Aldridge Co. v. Microsoft Corp.
| Citation | 995 F.Supp. 728 |
| Decision Date | 05 February 1998 |
| Docket Number | No. Civ.A. H-96-0198.,Civ.A. H-96-0198. |
| Parties | THE DAVID L. ALDRIDGE COMPANY, et al., Plaintiffs, v. MICROSOFT CORPORATION, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of Texas |
Julius Glickman, Glickman Herlong and Hughes, Houston, TX, for Plaintiffs.
Ronald D Secrest, Beck Redden and Secrest, Houston, TX, for Defendant.
At issue in this action is the liability of Microsoft Corporation under Texas tort law and federal antitrust law for the demise in sales of the Cache86 disk cache program. Pending before the court is Microsoft's Motion for Summary Judgment. For reasons explained below the motion will be granted in part and denied in part.
An appreciation of the legal issues in this case requires a basic understanding of computer operating systems in general and Microsoft's Windows95 operating system in particular.
Modern personal computers consist of a microprocessor and several components ("peripheral devices"), including volatile and nonvolatile memory chips;1 data input devices, such as keyboards and mouses; data storage devices, such as hard and floppy disk drives;2 output devices, such as printers and monitors; and communication interfaces, such as fax/modems and ethernet connections. Computers only perform operations when told to do so. An operating system is a program that coordinates activities among the various components of the computer and controls the flow of data among them.3 It is a computer's operating system, for example, that instructs the computer to download data from memory to a disk or to execute the necessary procedures to open a program when requested to do so by the user. While personal computer users could conceivably write their own customized operating system programs, commercially available operating systems are far more desirable to most users.
Microsoft Corporation is a software manufacturer that sells numerous computer programs, including the MS-DOS operating system.4 As personal computers proliferated, MS-DOS became the operating system of choice among users of computers modeled on IBM's personal computer design.5 Software manufacturers began tailoring their programs to run in conjunction with MS-DOS.6 Many software companies also wrote programs, known as utilities, to improve the performance of operating systems in general, and MS-DOS in particular.7 Plaintiffs developed a utility program called Cache86 that accelerated the disk-writing functions of MS-DOS. David L. Aldridge, the owner of The David L. Aldridge Company, originally wrote the computer code for this program. Technical Partners owns the program, and The David L. Aldridge Company markets and sells it. (For simplicity, the court will refer to the three plaintiffs collectively as Aldridge.)
Cache86 is a disk cache program. Disk cache programs are designed to improve the speed at which computers function.8 An application program such as a word processor will often direct the operating system to download ("write") or upload ("read") data from the computer's hard or floppy disk. Because of the great speed of modern microprocessors the computer cannot physically perform these read-write operations as fast as the microprocessor can process the data. Read-write operations occur more slowly because disk drives are mechanical devices that can only move so quickly, while the rest of a computer's operations occur electrically and are theoretically only limited by the speed of light. The microprocessor must thus often wait idle while the read-write operations are completed.
Disk caches solve this problem by intercepting information that the operating system is reading from or writing to the computer's hard disk and temporarily using vacant portions of the computer's RAM as a pseudo-disk. This allows the operating system to perform the read-write operations electrically instead of using the hard disk. The disk cache program sets aside a portion of RAM to temporarily store data; this set-aside area of memory is called a "cache." When an application program reads data from a disk, the disk cache program copies the data into the set-aside portion of RAM. The next time the application program needs that same data it can read that data electrically from the cache in RAM rather than having to read mechanically from the hard disk. When the application program writes data onto the disk, the disk cache program directs the data to the set-aside cache in RAM. Because reading from and writing to RAM is an electrical operation, the computer can perform these operations much faster than it can with a mechanical disk drive.9
The way the Cache86 disk cache utility program functions is important to this case. Aldridge designed Cache86 to improve the performance of MS-DOS.10 MS-DOS (and versions of Windows that run in conjunction with MS-DOS) performs read-write operations to the hard disk by "calling" a "device driver"11 — a program used by operating systems to control peripheral devices such as a hard disk drive.12 The hard disk drive driver then sends commands to an interface on the microprocessor known as "Interrupt 13."13 Cache86 monitors Interrupt 13 and intercepts the information and instructions that pass through that interrupt (a process referred to as "hooking").14 Cache86 thus reroutes read-write operations to the cache in RAM by hooking Interrupt 13.15
For years Microsoft developed gradually more sophisticated versions of its MS-DOS operating system. Eventually, Microsoft introduced a supplemental operating system, Windows, to run in conjunction with MS-DOS. Windows allowed users to perform tasks by "pointing and clicking" on small pictures ("icons") displayed on the computer's video screen. This "graphical user interface" enabled users to operate their computers without having to enter typewritten commands into the computer.16 The evolution of operating systems and extensive advances in computer technology ultimately caused Microsoft to replace MS-DOS and Windows with a new, fundamentally different operating system called Windows95.17 This new system combined the graphical user interface made popular by Windows with more advanced programming techniques.18
Windows95 can operate in three different modes: DOS-compatibility mode, real-mode DOS, and protect mode. When Windows95 operates in DOS-compatibility mode it emulates MS-DOS by calling the hard disk drive in the same manner as MS-DOS.19 Microsoft included this mode so that Windows95 could run most MS-DOS programs as if they had been designed for use with Windows95. When operating in DOS-compatibility mode, however, Windows95 cannot use several of the new features designed to improve the operating system over its predecessors.20 Real-mode DOS is a hybrid between DOS-compatibility mode and protect mode. When operating in real-mode DOS the computer remains in protect mode but runs DOS as an application program. In other words, the user has opened DOS as an application program to run under the guidance of protect mode.
When in protect mode the Windows95 operating system functions in a new, fundamentally different way.21 Among numerous changes and improvements, protect mode uses a different file system22 and does not use device drivers; instead, in protect mode Windows95 interacts directly with peripheral devices. While the file system in MS-DOS cannot function while MS-DOS performs other tasks, the file system in protect mode can operate simultaneously while the operating system performs other tasks, a property known as "multitasking." Moreover, while MS-DOS only allows data to flow in one direction at a time between the operating system and the hard drive, protect mode permits data to flow in both directions at the same time, a property known as "asynchronous input-output."23
How protect mode accomplishes these features is not relevant to this action except for one important point: Protect mode does not perform read-write operations only through Interrupt 13.24 Protect mode also uses other interrupts. Because Cache86, like many other disk cache programs, operates under the assumption that the computer will transfer all read-write data through Interrupt 13, Cache86 only monitors and hooks the data passing through Interrupt 13.25 Since computers running under Windows95 protect mode do not exclusively use Interrupt 13, a disk cache program like Cache86 will not reroute all of the data sent between the microprocessor and the hard disk.26 Programs such as Cache86 that hook. Interrupt 13 thus posed a serious concern for the designers of Windows95.27
For example, while a disk cache program performs read-write operations of the data passing through Interrupt 13 to the cache in RAM, Windows95 protect mode could be sending data to the hard disk directly or through other data pathways. If that occurred, the data stored in RAM might no longer be synchronized with the corresponding information on the hard disk.28 This would create the danger of a problem known as "data corruption" that could cause the computer to lose all of the information stored on the hard disk.29 Microsoft wanted to avoid this problem30 while ensuring that computer owners could continue to use their existing MS-DOS and Windows-compatible programs.31
Because of the popularity of MS-DOS and Windows, over the years software developers sold thousands of programs specifically designed to function with the MS-DOS and Windows operating systems.32 When Microsoft designed its new operating system it wanted to ensure that computer users could still use their MS-DOS-and Windows-compatible programs with the new system; in other words, Microsoft intended to make Windows95 "backwardly compatible."33 The problem Microsoft faced was to design Windows95 with the capability of running MS-DOS-and...
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