The Register: Judge orders Microsoft to spill internal docs and scour execs' comms in secondhand licensing case

The legal spat between secondhand software reseller ValueLicensing and Microsoft took another turn this week: a consent order was published with demands for documents from past and present Microsoft head honchos, and a planned case management conference was canceled.

Several requests in the order revolved around a historic, potentially explosive internal document written by Microsoft entitled the "Second-Hand Software" (SHS) Presentation.

Execs whose mailboxes and document repositories must be searched include Richard Chin, currently a Corporate VP at Microsoft responsible for the company's monetization approach and who was a General Manager between 2012 and 2020 working on pricing, licensing, and the business models in the Cloud and AI world. Kevin Turner, who was Chief Operating Officer at Microsoft from 2005 to 2016, is also on the list.

Read the article in full here.