Should "Vaporware" Be an Antitrust Concern? Symposium: Economics of Antitrust Enforcement 42 Antitrust Bulletin 1997

About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

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.