California man sues Microsoft for discontinuing Windows 10 — says company is doing this to “monopolize the generative AI market”

Lawrence Klein, who’s based in Southern California, filed a complaint against Microsoft in the San Diego Superior Court over its plan to discontinue support for Windows 10 by October 14, 2025. According to the Courthouse News Service, Klein owns two Windows 10 laptops, both of which will become obsolete come October. He asserts that Microsoft is making this move “to force its customers to purchase new devices optimized to run Microsoft’s suite of generative artificial intelligence (AI) software such as Copilot, which comes bundled with Windows 11 by default.”

Upgrading to Windows 11 from Windows 10 is currently free, but millions of devices are barred from doing this because they lack one crucial requirement — TPM 2.0. Microsoft states that this is a non-negotiable requirement for all future Windows versions, so devices that do not have these installed aren’t eligible for upgrade. You can bypass this requirement, but doing so means your computer is not officially supported, and you will have a difficult time obtaining technical support from Microsoft if you encounter any issues.

You can extend support by one year if you’re an individual through a one-time $30 purchase under the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, but it requires a Microsoft Account. The requirement to create a Microsoft account to log into Windows 11 is one of the reasons why a few Windows 10 holdouts refuse to upgrade. Therefore, the ESU program will likely also be a no-go for them. For many, they have no choice but to bite the bullet and spend money on new equipment to upgrade; however, another group suggests switching to Linux instead.

Klein is requesting that Microsoft be compelled to support Windows 10 at no additional cost until its market share falls below 10% of all Windows users. If the court agrees with him, this will incur additional fees for the company and may even delay the adoption of Windows 11. After all, even though Microsoft launched the latest version of Windows almost four years ago, it wasn’t until this year that it overtook Windows 10 — probably because of the impending demise of the latter.

With only a couple of months left until Microsoft sunsets Windows 10, we likely would not see the outcome of this case before then. Moreover, the company will likely fight this to the Supreme Court, utilizing its nearly limitless funds and armies of lawyers.

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