Microsoft’s appeal to the antitrust case against Novell has been rejected by the Supreme Court of Appeals on Tuesday and the complaint will go forward on trial. The antitrust case between the two parts dates back to the mid 1990s regarding Novell’s software product WordPerfect.

In 2004 Novell sued Microsoft for abusing its position and trying to monopolize the market, by simply destroying WordPerfect. According to that lawsuit, Microsoft made an abuse by suppressing “the sales of WordPerfect and Novell’s related office productivity.”

Novell argued in its lawsuit that Microsoft was afraid of the competition WordPerfect would make to its own software products and specifically kept essential information that would have allowed a WordPerfect – Windows 95 compatibility.

According to the statistics, WordPerfect had 50 percent of the market in 1990, and dropped to less than 10 percent in 1996, two years after Novell bought it. At the same time, Microsoft’s Word dominance on the market became clear, owning 90 percent of it by 1996.

In its recent appeal, Microsoft tried to argue that the antitrust lawsuit should no longer be valid, considering Novell is not in the operating system market anymore, but that didn’t seem to convince the judges. Chief Justice John Roberts, Microsoft shareholder, recused himself from the decision.

Microsoft already got an unfavorable decision and if the case goes further on trial, Novell could ask for more. Microsoft declined to say whether they were planning on settling this outside the court.

The Redmond-based company released a statement after the decision: “We filed our petition because it offered an opportunity to address the question of who may assert antitrust claims. We look forward to addressing this and other substantive matters in the case before the trial court. We believe the facts will show that Novell’s claims, which are 12 to 14 years old, are without merit.”