The company sees it as an obvious consumer benefit, but competitors see it as a tremendous step toward locking customers into Microsoft's products.

This tended to lock customers in to a single vendor.

Some Hailstorm features are viewed by some industry experts and rival executives as a way to lock customers into Microsoft's products and services.

Corporations looooooove unpatented innovation, that cannot be used to lock customers in, and competitors out.

TVL does not have data caps but does lock customers into a 12-month contract.

Sun portrays Microsoft as irredeemably wedded to a strategy of trying to lock customers to Windows and extend its monopoly from the desktop PC business into corporate data centers.

The bandits locked the employees and customers into the safe and scooped up $6,000 in cash and $4,000 in bonds from the vault.

IBM, in particular, helped create barriers that tended to lock customers into a single platform.

What is more, they say, the company has locked customers into contracts that will guard it temporarily from any slump in price.

As New Mexico attorney general from 1986 to 1990, Mr. Stratton took on an auto dealership accused of locking recalcitrant customers in rooms until they agreed to buy a car.