Microsoft has failed in its US court attempt to get Novell to reveal documents it gave to the European Commission for use in its anti-trust case.

In rejecting the request, Boston district court judge Mark Wolf said Microsoft was trying to circumvent EU laws.

'Microsoft has not demonstrated that the [EU] procedures are fundamentally unfair,' he said.

The ruling comes after similar requests by the Redmond-based company were rejected by courts in California where it had asked for access to documents provided by Oracle and Sun Microsystems.

A court in New York is still considering a request for documents provided by IBM to be revealed.

All four companies named by Microsoft have provided support for European claims that the software giant is not doing enough to comply with its March 2004 anti-trust decision.

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