According to the ruling issued by U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz in Maryland, Microsoft would not have to face a class-action consumer lawsuit because it would be difficult to identify a group of plaintiffs who would be considered typical buyers of Microsoft's software.

The ruling, which would make it more difficult for plaintiffs' lawyers to extract multimillion-dollar settlements from the software giant, comes after Microsoft settled its antitrust case with the federal government and most states in the past few months.

The consumer lawsuits argue that Microsoft had abused its monopoly and overpriced its software.

"This is a significant step in resolving a number of the legal issues facing the company," said Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake.

Microsoft is still being pursued in court for billions of dollars in damages from consumers and competitors such as Sun Microsystems Inc. SUNW.O .

Lawyers for the plaintiffs had been seeking to gain class-action status to make it easier to obtain a judgment against Microsoft or reach a settlement.

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft has built up a cash hoard of more than $43 billion, in part, because of the threat of litigation.

Motz did allow, however, a smaller group of consumers who had bought Microsoft products directly from the company's Web site to go forward with a class-action lawsuit.