Microsoft Remedy Must Fit the Findings, Enforcer Says

Microsoft Corp. must agree to a remedy that addresses the serious nature of its anti-competitive conduct to settle the government’s antitrust suit, the Justice Department’s chief antitrust enforcer told Congress.

A judge’s findings of fact against the world’s largest software maker “revealed . . . that Microsoft had engaged in a serious pattern of anti-competitive practices,” Joel Klein testified before a Senate subcommittee on antitrust law. “The remedy ought to be commensurate with those practices.”

Klein declined to say whether settlement talks between the government and Microsoft were making progress. “Settlement is better than litigation, but the settlement would have to be, of course, appropriate to deal with the concerns that the court documented in its opinion.”

U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson found in November that the company had a monopoly for personal computer operating software and repeatedly took steps to thwart challenges to its dominance. Jackson then recruited a federal appeals judge to try to mediate an out-of-court settlement between Microsoft, the Justice Department and 19 states that also sued.

Those talks are continuing.