Microsoft to Ask for Intermediate Court Hearing in Antitrust Appeal

Microsoft Corp. plans to ask the Supreme Court today to let a lower tribunal hear the company’s appeal of antitrust violations first, a strategy aimed at avoiding a verdict to split the software giant. The high court will be dealing with a novel situation--the first time it must settle a squabble about whether to take a direct appeal under a special law covering government-initiated antitrust cases.

“If this case doesn’t qualify, then the statute’s a dead letter,” said Don Falk, a lawyer with Mayer, Brown & Platt, which represents such Microsoft adversaries as Oracle Corp. But Yale law professor George Priest said he thinks the Supreme Court is “overwhelmingly likely” to let an appeals court handle the case first.

District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson found in June that Microsoft had used illegal and unfair tactics against rivals to sustain monopoly power for its Windows operating system, used in most personal computers, and ordered the company broken up.

Microsoft wants the appeal to go first to an intermediate court, which ruled for it in 1998 on a related matter. Microsoft shares fell $1.56 to close at $69 on Nasdaq.