The first lawsuit was filed Wednesday by Brian Johnson of Los Angeles in a Seattle federal court. It sought unspecified damages as well as class action status on claims that Microsoft's WGA softwaremislead users as to its true purpose, failed to obtain consent before installing, and transmitted data to the company's servers.

    The lawsuit alleged that Microsoft's anti-piracy tool, which gathers information about the user's system ¡ª including such information as hard drive serial numbers ¡ª and determines whether the Windows software on the system is a legal copy, is in violation of spyware laws and the rights of consumers.

    The suit says that Microsoft misled customers in that "the updates from Windows Automatic Update installed WGA 2006 Verification without specific notice to or approval from the users, even when the users sought to specifically control what was installed on their system through the Custom installation setting."

    The second class-action lawsuit was filed Friday on behalf of a group of Washington businesses and individuals filed. It alleges that the tool, a Microsoft program designed to check whether a user is running a legitimate copy of the company's operating system software, amounts to spyware.

    Microsoft disputes the allegations.

    A spokesperson for Microsoft, Jim Desler, called the allegations "without merit" and said that "it's distorting the objectives of WGA and the filing obscures the harm of software piracy. WGA is distributed in a manner that is lawful."

    Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) anti-piracy tool was released in 2005 by Microsoft as part of their anti-piracy initiative. Enditem

    (Agencies)