Battle Heats Up Between U.S. and Microsoft : Computers: The company fights the latest demand for information on its on-line plans.
Microsoft Corp., complaining of harassment by federal antitrust lawyers, is fighting the Justice Department’s latest demand for information about the company’s plan to package software for a new on-line service with its Windows 95 personal computer operating system.
Calling the demand the “latest salvo in what increasingly appears to be a campaign of harassment directed against Microsoft,” the software industry leader said antitrust investigators last week issued an impossible deadline for answers to a sweeping request for documents about the company’s business plans.
The Justice Department said in court documents that Microsoft’s complaint is a “tempest in a teapot.” It accused the software maker of seizing on “a purported disagreement” about the timing of the investigation to “short-circuit” negotiations about the government’s probe.
Microsoft’s petition, filed Friday in federal court in New York, escalates a bitter fight between the PC software industry giant and top antitrust officials.
The battle seems to be heating up, as Justice Department lawyers race to gather information about Windows 95 in time to act before Microsoft’s planned Aug. 24 release of the operating system software.
The company wants to sell Windows 95 packaged with software that allows consumers to connect with its Microsoft Network on-line service. In recent weeks, the Justice Department has requested, on tight deadlines, information from a range of industry sources about whether such packaging would give Microsoft an unfair competitive advantage over other on-line services.
In court papers, Microsoft charged that after various federal antitrust probes lasting more than five years, the Justice Department “seems to be doing its level best to hinder Microsoft’s efforts” to expand into on-line services.
At the close of trading Monday, Microsoft’s stock was down $1.38 at $89.75.
The government’s concerns that Microsoft might use its dominance in computer operating systems to gain unfair advantage in the competition for on-line services “are, quite frankly, ridiculous,” the company said.
