While Windows Vista has been the center of major legal troubles (anti-trust violations) for Microsoft with the EU, they have some other lesser known lawsuits pending. These include:

• Forefront trademark suit, Forefront is the name of Microsoft’s future Corporate Security Software but Dexter & Chaney, a Seattle software company has used the name for more than 18 years for its construction-related software.
• Xbox Live patent suit, the multi-player technology used by Microsoft seems to similar to that of PalTalk Holdings Inc.
• Cryptography patent, now this unusual, a case Microsoft has won (but 9 years after the initial suit).
• Iowa antitrust suit, Bill Gates to possibly be called as a witness in one of the last consumer anti-trust class actions suites.

Todd Bishop has all the details of these plus the claims brought up by the EU against Windows Vista, with links to PDF* documents in his blog article: This week in Microsoft lawsuits. Have to laugh at this article title, almost makes it sound as if this is a normal occurrence for Microsoft…oh wait this IS normal for Microsoft to be the subject of multiple lawsuits at one time.

I’ll say this for the EU they are not going to allow Microsoft to bully PC users in the EU to think they have to use all Microsoft on their computers. This may also explain why there is a higher usage share of Firefox among countries in the EU.

* Some of these PDF documents can span upwards to 90+ pages and can be very large. For best results in viewing and loading the PDF files, I would strongly recommended using the FREE FoxIt Reader 2.