States Counter Microsoft Witness

A software executive defending Microsoft Corp. against antitrust penalties said Microsoft blindsided his company by dropping support for a computer language critical to one of its products.

Scott Borduin, vice president of Autodesk--maker of the architectural design program AutoCAD-- testified in federal court that antitrust penalties proposed by the nine states, including ones that would require Microsoft’s disclosure of technical information, are unnecessary and would damage the software community.

Lawyers for the states countered by releasing an e-mail in which Borduin harshly criticized Microsoft for dropping support for the Java programming language in its latest operating system, Windows XP. Java is used in Autodesk products.