The lawsuit alleges that Microsoft harmed Be through a series of illegal deals with PC makers which prohibited them from selling PCs with multiple pre-installed operating systems.
Be tried offering its operating system as a compliment to Windows. In early 1998, it struck a deal with Hitachi, the computer maker agreeing to pre-install Be’s operating system alongside Windows. However, Microsoft’s licence for Windows refused to allow Hitachi to offer Be’s desktop icon and Microsoft allegedly sent two officers to Hitachi to express their “anger” over its relationship with Be.
Hitachi eventually sold a line of computers with the Be system installed. However, apparently due to Microsoft's conditions, they were not configured to allow the user to boot the Be system and nothing in the computer’s start-up sequence indicated that Be existed on the hard drive as an alternative to Windows. The user was required to boot the Be system from a floppy disk. Consequently, few consumers used Be.
The company has not yet specified how much it is seeking in damages, although in its statement it claims that it was once valued at over $1 billion.