The advertising and marketing company hired to create Apple’s commercials poking fun at Microsoft’s Vista operating system might get new material to work with. After Microsoft tried to protect its top brass from testifying in a case involving “Windows Vista Capable” PCs, a judge has ordered CEO Steve Ballmer to give a deposition.
In September, Ballmer tried to avoid being pulled into the suit and having to go through the discovery process, but U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman has denied a motion to exclude Ballmer, according to the judge’s order posted on SeattlePI.com’s blog.
The plaintiffs showed evidence that Ballmer had personal knowledge of the situation, according to court documents.
“We will, of course, comply with the court’s order,” said David Bowermaster, a Microsoft spokesperson, in an e-mail. “Mr. Ballmer’s knowledge about the Windows Vista Capable program comes from the executives he empowered to run the program and make decisions, and two of those executives already testified in this case.”
Bowermaster is referring to two former Microsoft executives, Jim Allchin and Will Poole. Allchin retired in Jan. 2007 on the same day Microsoft officially released Windows Vista to consumers while Poole left Microsoft last month “to pursue other interests.”
Microsoft thought the former executives’ testimonies would take the pressure off Ballmer. Instead, Pechman ruled that Ballmer would have to testify based on several pages of e-mail correspondence in which he was included.
Ballmer will have to testify about his knowledge of Microsoft releasing “Windows Vista Capable”-labeled PCs that weren’t powerful enough to run all Vista’s features and could only run a stripped-down version.
In 2006 Microsoft, a year before the company released the Vista operating system, authorized original equipment manufacturers such as Dell and Sony to place a sticker on PCs indicating that the PC was certified as Windows Vista…