Microsoft made a similar argument last week when it filed its motion for a stay of the injunction. At that time, Microsoft warned of "massive disruptions" to its sales of Office, as well as to the sales of important partners, and named both Dell and HP.

Dell and HP added their voices to the chorus of implied chaos. "The District Court's injunction of Microsoft Word will have an impact far beyond Microsoft. Microsoft Word is ubiquitous among word processing software and is included on [redacted] computers sold by Hewlett-Packard."

The public versions of both briefs were heavily redacted. Dell and HP said that the deleted material included descriptions of the "contractual provisions governing software changes between Dell, [Hewlett-Packard] and Microsoft."

A Dell spokesman and an HP spokeswoman declined to comment further for their companies, with the latter citing company policy not to comment on pending litigation.

A source familiar with the amicus curiae briefs, however, hinted that it would be difficult if not impossible for Dell and HP to meet the October deadline. The companies first must receive new code from Microsoft, test the resulting disk images before using them to format new PCs' hard drives and then get those systems into the sales channels and pull out existing PCs that are equipped with current versions of Word.

Continue at Computerworld

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