‘Lone Voice’ Laid Foundation for Landmark Suit

Monday’s ruling that Microsoft Corp. violated antitrust laws can be described as the culmination of a crusade launched against the company more than six years ago by a Silicon Valley lawyer and Civil War buff named Gary Reback.

Working on behalf of clients such as Sun Microsystems Inc. and Netscape Communications Corp., Reback, 51, is perhaps more responsible than any other individual for prodding the government to pursue its landmark antitrust case against Microsoft.

“Gary in many ways was for a long time a lone voice in the wilderness,” said Mitchell Kertzman, chief executive of Liberate Technologies, an interactive TV software concern. “Microsoft has been such a bully and so intimidating that [many feared to speak publicly on the issue]. You’ve got to say that Gary was the guy that got the ball rolling.”

But even if Reback helped lay the foundation for Monday’s outcome, he says it isn’t a particularly satisfying moment for him, partly because he has not been involved in the case for several years. He also knows that the legal fight is likely to continue for some time.

“This hasn’t reached a point of finality,” Reback said. “And we’re not going to know for a long time whether it turned out to be meaningful. So I guess I’m trying not to get too excited about it all.”

Often described in the mid-1990s as the one man Bill Gates might fear, Reback hounded the company for years.

He ridiculed an earlier consent decree between the government and Microsoft as inadequate, and helped defeat Microsoft’s planned acquisition of the personal finance software firm Intuit in 1995. From 1995 to 1997, Reback also wrote dozens of letters and documents that helped convince the Justice Department that Microsoft was using its operating system monopoly as a club to bludgeon rivals.

Reback is best known for the fervent commitment he brings to his cases. He made his first mark by successfully defending the Borland software company against a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Lotus.

His colleague at the time, Peter Detkin, has often told the story about how Reback turned red-faced with passion during one stretch of courtroom arguments in which he was referring to two cardboard displays comparing one company’s product with the other.

With one panel on each shoulder, “he started to look like Moses coming down from the mountain with two stone tablets,” said Detkin, now a top attorney for Intel Corp.

In fact, Reback came to be seen as such an anti-Microsoft zealot that it strained his relationships with many other attorneys in Silicon Valley, as well as some of his clients. James Barksdale, former chief executive of Netscape, praised Reback but implied that his role diminished in time.

“His knowledge and forcefulness was terrific,” Barksdale said. “In the early years, he was extremely helpful as a confidant and advisor.”

Reback parted with Netscape just as the antitrust momentum against Microsoft was heating up. Reback says that was simply his choice, but others with knowledge of the matter said it was partly because he refused to accept a lesser role.

“He’s kind of like Billy Martin,” said one Silicon Valley attorney who requested anonymity, referring to the late baseball manager who was as well-known for the many times he was fired as for his leadership qualities. “He’s really good at first, but he wears on you, and then you have to let him go.”

Reback bristles at such criticism, attributing them to jealousy and a lack of understanding of the unsavory tactics his mission often required.

“My job was to transform the thinking in Washington and elsewhere so that the government would get involved,” Reback said.

Indeed, Reback is even considering leaving the legal profession. The Stanford Law School graduate said he is in the process of “phasing out” his involvement at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, the prominent law firm in Palo Alto where he has worked since the mid-1990s.

He said he is now focused on an Internet telephony start-up, though he declined to elaborate, saying it is in “stealth” mode.

“My assignment from the beginning of [the Microsoft matter] was to get the government involved,” Reback said. “Once that happened, I wanted to move on to other things.”