Advertisment

Microsoft faces charges of deceptive advertising

author-image
CIOL Bureau
New Update

NEW YORK: Software titan Microsoft Corp is facing federal charges of false

and deceptive advertising for the second time in less than a year, the Wall

Street Journal
reported in its online edition on Monday.

Advertisment

Microsoft is already negotiating to settle the charges, pending before the

Federal Trade Commission, the paper reported lawyers close to the case as

saying. A Microsoft spokesman Sunday declined comment, it said.

The FTC focused on Microsoft's aggressive advertising campaign targeting Palm

Inc, whose products compete against those hand-held devices using Microsoft's

Windows software, the paper said. The FTC found that Microsoft's "can your

palm do that?" ads, last year deceptively claimed features that were

unavailable unless buyers spent more for wireless capability, lawyers close to

the case were reported as saying.

Microsoft recently ended the ad campaign, which ran widely in newspapers and

magazines, with no mention of the FTC inquiry, the paper said. In a new, $3

million ad campaign, Microsoft makes no references to Palm while showing a new

generation of wireless devices at work, it added.

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.

tech-news