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Microsoft: Looking to KO the DOJ (Part 1 of 2)

© Benjamin Nham

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YOU COULD SAY THAT the world's largest, most profitable, and hated software company just lost a few battles. On the marketing level, PR is getting hammered about why Windows NT 5.0 is getting delayed again and again. Microsoft also moved the Office 2000 launch back a couple months.

But it's the legal battles that are hurting most for Microsoft. On August 6, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled that Microsoft had to make Bill Gates and 16 other top executives available for unlimited deposition for the ongoing antitrust suit against the software company. (Confused? Check out U.S. v. Microsoft: The Case in a Nutshell.) This, after Microsoft proposed for having Gates and 8 other top executives being available for 8 hours only. (Update: The press will now be able to hear these depositions.)

Not only that, Judge Jackson also ruled that Microsoft had to turn over the source code of both Windows 95 and Windows 98 to be turned over to investigators. (The source code is what makes up Windows: the low-level code Microsoft developers wrote to speak with the hardware and perform functions for the user.)

Microsoft, however, came out of the dust looking for something else: a knockout punch. With less than a month until the antitrust case comes to trial (on September 8), the software behemoth filed a 33-page response to the Department of Justice's and state attorneys general's arguments against Microsoft. Another 88-page filing asked Judge Jackson to throw out the case as groundless.

Microsoft claims that three key points that "are not under dispute" undermine the government's case:

• Capitalizing on a strong victory dating from June 23 where an appeals court considered Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer one integrated product, the filing noted that "Internet Explorer technologies are an integrated element of the Microsoft Windows operating system."
• Capitalizing on another part of the June 23 ruling, Microsoft states that integration of Internet technologies and Internet Explorer into Windows has been beneficial to customers.
• Finally, that no Microsoft contracts or practices have prevented Netscape from distributing its browser.

In the 33-page response to the governments' motion for a preliminary injunction and the 88-page motion for summary judgment, Microsoft also tries to show that all other points of the government's case are undermined:

Tying? What Tying?

Central to the government's case is that Internet Explorer and Windows are "tied" together. Microsoft claims that Windows and Internet Explorer are integrated (not seperate), and that many of the functions that Internet Explorer provides are used by Windows for other functions. They claim, "the government has been unable even to identify the software that supposedly constitutes the separate "Internet browser software" that is the basis for its tying claim. Microsoft believes that these facts and the Appeals Court ruling, which stated that Windows 95 and Internet Explorer technologies are a "genuine integration," undermine the government's claim that Microsoft has illegally tied two products together."

The copyright of the article Microsoft: Looking to KO the DOJ (Part 1 of 2) in Computer News is owned by Benjamin Nham. Permission to republish Microsoft: Looking to KO the DOJ (Part 1 of 2) in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.