10 July 1996: The federal government and IBM agreed today to end a 40-year-old decree against the computer giant.
The 1956 consent decree between the Department of Justice and IBM, of Armonk, N.Y., resulted in several restrictions on the company that were designed to prevent it from becoming a monopoly in the computer industry. Some of the restrictions on IBM's AS/400 line will be terminated within six months of a judge's approval, and the rest four years later. The restrictions on the S/390 line will be phased out in five years. "While we continue to believe the consent decree should be terminated immediately, this settlement allows us to move ahead without spending further time and money in litigation," said IBM General Counsel Lawrence Ricciardi. "We have been under restrictions 40 years already, and it's time to move on." ================ There are currently no "Consent Decree" or similar restrictions on IBM. The last was the 1984 EC Undertaking that mainly concerned the timely availability of interface information. Interestingly, the Amdahl corporate lawyer who helped DG IV put the 1984 Undertaking together is now with Platform Solutions. It may be that DG IV will get interested again. Perhaps about 64-bit commercials, too. -- Phil Payne http://www.isham-research.co.uk +44 7833 654 800 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
