About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

42 Antitrust Bull. 33 (1997)
Should "Vaporware" Be an Antitrust Concern?

handle is hein.journals/antibull42 and id is 45 raw text is: The Antitrust Bulletin/Spring 1997 Should vaporware be an antitrust concern? BY STEPHAN M. LEVY* Vaporware is commonly considered to be computer software that either is not available to the public at a previously announced date or does not possess the features or capabilities promised when the software was announced.1 The anticompetitive potential of vaporware has been hotly debated in the computer industry press for some time.2 Microsoft Corp. has recently been accused * Bureau of Economics, Federal Trade Commission, Washington, DC. AUTHOR'S NOTE: This article is related to an earlier article I presented at The Economics of Antitrust Enforcement session of the 71st Annual West- ern Economic Association Conference, San Francisco, CA, June 28-July 2, 1996. I would like to thank Robert Levinson, Lawrence Wu, Carl Gwin, Eileen Alannah Orrison and the other workshop participants for their helpful comments and suggestions. The views expressed in this article are my own and not necessarily those of the Federal Trade Commission or any individual Commissioner. All errors are my own. I In a more general sense, vaporware may include products beyond computer software, such as computer hardware or graduate school disser- tations. 2 See, for example, Jeff Papows, Software Business Practices Improving, But Not Fixed Yet, COMPUTERWORLD, Apr. 20, 1992, at 29. (footnote 2 continued) © 1997 by Federal Legal Publications. Inc.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most