Company: Press Releases

Winternals & Best Buy/Geek Squad Settle Federal Lawsuit

(Austin, Texas – July 10, 2006) -- Winternals Software^® is pleased to announce that it has reached an agreement to settle the copyright infringement lawsuit it filed in April against Best Buy and its subsidiary, Geek Squad.

As part of the agreement, Winternals and Best Buy have entered into a three-year business relationship whereby Best Buy's Geek Squad and other computer service and repair employees will be licensed to use a variety of Winternals' and Sysinternals' software programs, including Winternals' flagship ERD Commander. The industry-leading software is a system repair and data recovery tool that boots a dead computer into a familiar Windows-like, point-and-click environment for rapid system recovery. It helps users restore deleted data, reset passwords, copy files to and from unbootable systems, edit the registry, and access restore points on a dead Windows computer. Sysinternals is a web site dedicated to advanced utilities, technical information, and source code for Windows that is sponsored by Winternals.

Winternals' lawyer, David Weaver, filed motions Friday in the U.S. District Court in Austin officially announcing the settlement agreement and asking U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks to dismiss the lawsuit.

"The financial terms of the agreement are confidential," said Mr. Weaver, a partner at Vinson & Elkins' Austin office and an expert in intellectual property law. "Winternals is pleased that the copyright dispute is resolved and both companies are thrilled to have reached this long-term business relationship."

For more information about the settlement, please contact David Weaver at (512) 542-8651 or via e-mail at [email protected]. Or you may contact Winternals' public relations manager Kevin Franks at (512) 381-2972 or via e-mail at [email protected].