Out-Law / Your Daily Need-To-Know

Microsoft announced yesterday that it will pay up to $202 million in vouchers to settle class action lawsuits brought by consumers and businesses that said the company violated Florida's antitrust and unfair competition laws.

The settlement kitty can be claimed by class action members – being those who bought licenses for its Windows operating system, productivity suite, spreadsheet or word processing software between 1995 and 2002, for use in the state of Florida. They can use the vouchers to buy any manufacturer's desktop, laptop or tablet computers running any operating system, or any software.

Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will provide half of any unclaimed settlement proceeds to Florida's most needy public schools in the form of vouchers. Schools will be able to use these vouchers to purchase computer equipment, software and training from any manufacturer.

The settlement, filed yesterday in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, was given preliminary approval. The court has set a hearing date of 24th November for final approval of the settlement.

In January, Microsoft reached a similar deal to settle class action lawsuits in California. In that deal, Microsoft agreed to pay up to $1.1 billion with two-thirds of unclaimed proceeds going to schools.

Microsoft has also just revealed its latest financial results. It reported a net profit for the third-quarter of $2.79 billion on sales of $7.84 billion, up from $2.74 billion on sales of $7.25 for Q3 last year.

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