Bristol Technology

Bristol Technology Inc. was a software development company founded in January 1991 by Keith, Ken, and Jean Blackwell. The company's original product idea, Wind/U, was an implementation of the

In August 1998, Bristol filed a federal antitrust suit against Microsoft Corporation,^[3][4] accusing Microsoft of entangling Bristol in a charade to stifle competition from other operating systems: UNIX, Compaq's OpenVMS, and IBM's OS/390. Bristol alleged that after initially approaching Bristol in 1991 and creating a dependency for Bristol and its customers on the Windows programming interfaces, Microsoft was then seeking to end access to this technology on all but Windows operating systems.

In the lawsuit, Bristol sought unspecified damages for and injunctive relief from Microsoft's alleged anti competitive behavior. The injunction would have required Microsoft to provide Bristol with source code for future versions of Windows operating systems, including Microsoft

Bristol and Microsoft went to trial in the summer of 1999 in Federal Court in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Federal judge Janet Hall presided over the jury trial. Subsequently, the jury ruled that operating systems were not a definable market, thus Bristol did not have standing to sue under antitrust law. The jury did find that Microsoft violated Connecticut's Unfair Trade Practices Act; however, the jury could not quantify damages and only awarded Bristol $1. In a later ruling, Judge Hall awarded Bristol $1 million in punitive damages and $3.7 million in legal fees.^[5] In February 2001, Bristol and Microsoft reached a settlement agreement ending nearly four years of legal battles.^[6]

2001–2007: Rebuilding and purchase

Following the settlement of the lawsuit with Microsoft, Bristol once again focused on building the company.

Bristol's second R&D effort eventually yielded U.S. patent #7,003,781[8] and a new product, TransactionVision.^[9] TransactionVision provided organizations the ability to non-intrusively track electronic transactions throughout a heterogeneous IT infrastructure. In conjunction with its R&D efforts, Bristol raised $9.1 million in venture capital in a round that was led by Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) and Apax Partners for the first time in the company's history in 2003.^[10]

From 2003 through 2006, Bristol established TransactionVision in the