Microsoft, Officials to Seek Mediator
Court-ordered negotiations have failed to produce a settlement between Microsoft Corp. and antitrust officials, and the two sides will ask today that a mediator be appointed, sources said Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly forced the Redmond, Wash.-based software behemoth and federal and state prosecutors into around-the-clock talks Sept. 28, giving the parties until today to report a deal or request a mediator.
Justice Department antitrust chief Charles James and representatives of several of the 18 states also suing the company have been meeting with Microsoft attorneys since then but have made little progress, people briefed on the talks said.
Microsoft, a Justice spokeswoman and lead state attorney general in the case, Tom Miller of Iowa, all declined to comment.
Few had been optimistic about prospects for a settlement at this stage of the case, in which Microsoft has been found to have illegally sought to protect its monopoly in the operating systems for personal computers.
And even some state attorneys general who have not sued recently criticized the company for bundling its latest operating system, Windows XP, with other software in areas where Microsoft faces competition. The new programs include instant messaging, audio and video players.
Windows XP is not part of the current lawsuit, but some antitrust officials would like restrictions on it. They also want to limit Microsoft’s power over computer makers and to open up the operating system more, so that rival applications can run on Windows as smoothly as those from Microsoft.
A previous round of negotiations brokered by a federal judge failed last year, prompting U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson to order the company split in two.
Since then, Jackson’s breakup order has been overturned, Jackson has been replaced by Kollar-Kotelly, and the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected Microsoft’s request that it throw out Jackson’s findings of company misconduct.
If no settlement is reached by Nov. 2, the government must produce a plan for punishment by Dec. 7.
