Jerrry Kaplan, founder of pen computing pioneer Go Corporation, has filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft in a San Francisco court. With allegations regarded as "baseless" and "20 years old" by a Microsoft spokesperson, the suit says that Redmond  used Go technology that was demonstrated to Microsoft technicians under non-disclosure, as part of an effort to run Go out of business.

According to the suit, Microsoft allegedly used various "incentives and threats" to pressure Compaq, Fujitsu, Toshiba and other OEMS into rejecting Go's operating system.

Jerry Kaplan

Go was founded in 1987 by Kaplan, Robert Carr, and Kevin Doren to create a pen-based software interface, to be used on table computers that at the time were said to be the next logical evolution in personal computing. The company had significant financial backing and was a centerpiece of leading-edge IT technology coverage for several years, but ultimately had difficulty getting market traction.

Go Corp. was bought by AT&T in 1992 and merged with that company's then-EO table computer division. Kaplan later regrained control of Go's assets after purchasing them from Lucent (an AT&T spinoff), and he wrote a book about the company's journey. Maybe it's time for an updated version of the book.