Microsoft, U.S. Seek to Restrict Hearing

Microsoft Corp. and the Justice Department asked a federal judge Thursday to condense a fairness hearing on their controversial antitrust settlement to a single day and bar competitors from speaking.

In a joint filing, the two sides said the federal court weighing the proposed resolution of the case has more than enough written commentary--an unprecedented 10,000 pages.

About 30,000 people submitted comments to the Justice Department during the prescribed 60-day period, ranging from detailed 100-page analyses to such terse statements as “I hate Microsoft.”

The substantive comments ran 2 to 1 against the deal, according to Thursday’s filing. Among other things, the settlement would forbid Microsoft retaliating against companies that install non-Microsoft programs on personal computers.

California and eight other states oppose the deal and will push at a March trial for harsher remedies, including publication of the source code for Microsoft’s now-dominant Web browser.

The new filing asks that only the states supporting the agreement--not private companies--be permitted to debate the proposed settlement at the fairness hearing, which could come in early March.

“A large number of highly interested and motivated third parties have taken full advantage of the opportunity to submit extensive comments” in writing, Microsoft and Justice Department attorneys wrote.

The proposed restrictions on the fairness hearing drew immediate fire from some of the deal’s critics, who say it fails to punish Microsoft for what courts have determined was illegal abuse of its monopoly power over the operating system software in PCs.

“To fairly determine whether the proposed settlement is in the public interest, the judge needs to learn as much as possible from those who would have to live with it--the consumers, software developers, and equipment manufacturers,” said Mark Cooper, research director of the Consumer Federation of America.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has wide latitude in determining how extensive the fairness hearing should be, or if there should even be one.

“In the super-majority of instances, the court votes a settlement up or down based on the written record,” said Washington antitrust lawyer Keith Shugarman. But the wide interest in and ramifications of the Microsoft case make it more likely that the hearing could be extended.

California, Iowa and Connecticut declined to comment on the fairness hearing.

“We’re focused on our remedies case,” said California attorney general spokeswoman Sandra Michioku.