Sun’s Microsoft Remedy Praised
Microsoft Corp. went back to court Tuesday to fight a proposal from rival Sun Microsystems Inc. that the software giant be forced to include Sun’s Java programming language in its Windows operating system software.
U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz opened the three-day hearing by commenting that Sun’s plan offered an attractive and “narrowly tailored” remedy that could restore competition in the wake of illegal conduct by Microsoft. “That’s sort of an attractive remedy,” he said. “It is elegant.”
The judge’s remarks may signal that Microsoft’s legal troubles aren’t over despite the approval last month of a settlement between the company and the U.S. government after a 4 1/2-year antitrust battle. Two states, Massachusetts and West Virginia, are appealing U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s decision not to impose tougher sanctions on the company.
In the private suit in Baltimore, Sun is seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent Microsoft from shipping versions of Windows without its version of Java. In court Tuesday, Sun lawyer Lloyd R. Day Jr. said that would stop Microsoft from using its “illegal competitive advantage” to dominate the emerging market for Internet services software. Windows runs on more than 90% of the world’s personal computers.
Motz said the proposed remedy would let Sun’s Java programming language “compete on the merits” with Microsoft’s .Net Framework programming language, helping overcome Microsoft’s illegal “distortions of the market” that harmed Sun’s distribution of Java.
Microsoft lawyer David Tulchin argued that its programming language, which was designed for writing Web programs for electronic commerce and providing other services on the Internet, would not undermine Sun’s dominance in a market it has long controlled.
Sun is “not exactly a 98-pound weakling” and can easily pay computer makers “a little bit of money” to install Java on every PC they ship to consumers, Tulchin said.
But Motz said history gives Sun a reason to worry. In the federal antitrust trial, the court ruled that Microsoft pressured software developers not to use Java. Motz also recalled that Netscape Communications Corp.’s Navigator Web browser had more than an 80% market share before Microsoft started bundling its Internet Explorer into Windows.
Netscape, now a unit of AOL Time Warner Inc., is suing Microsoft for billions of dollars in damages, claiming Navigator was illegally squeezed. Motz is presiding over that suit as well.
Microsoft shares fell 98 cents to $56.71 on the Nasdaq, where Sun shares dropped 27 cents to $3.87.
