Testimony of Microsoft Rivals Limited
In a series of stern warnings Tuesday, the judge in the Microsoft antitrust trial admonished the nine states suing the software giant not to use the trial to establish new antitrust charges.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the purpose of the proceedings was to determine only what penalties Microsoft Corp. should face for its antitrust violations, not to expand the case with new charges.
“The plaintiffs are marching down a new liability path,” Kollar-Kotelly said. “With some of the areas the plaintiffs are going into, it is going to be a problem.”
The admonitions came just before the cross-examination of the states’ star witness, James L. Barksdale, the former president of Microsoft archrival Netscape Communications Corp., a unit of AOL Time Warner.
As Barksdale was about to take the stand, Kollar-Kotelly excused him and told attorneys for both sides that the former software executive would not be allowed to speculate about whether a proposed Microsoft antitrust settlement or harsher penalties against the software company could better restore software competition.
She also refused to allow Barksdale to discuss Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system.
The states’ lead trial lawyer, Brendan V. Sullivan Jr., asked Kollar-Kotelly for some latitude in witness testimony to help clarify the states’ demands for stiffer penalties against Microsoft.
Kollar-Kotelly did not reverse her stance. But she declined to give any immediate benefit to Microsoft, whose lawyers asked her to strike all the testimony of an earlier witness, Sun Microsystems Inc. executive Richard Green.
Green was questioned extensively about the alleged threat Sun’s Java programming language posed to Windows. After years of including the programming language with Windows, Microsoft dropped Java support in Windows XP--an act that states contend was anti-competitive. Kollar-Kotelly said she would reserve a final decision on what, if any, testimony to strike.
Kollar-Kotelly’s restrictions on witness testimony could hurt the states’ bid to seek tougher punishment. That’s because much of their case is forward-looking and concerns the anti-competitive effects of Microsoft products introduced in the last few months, such as Windows XP and .Net, an ambitious Microsoft e-commerce initiative that critics fear could dominate the market for Web services.
Barksdale and Green were put on the stand by the states to bolster their arguments that Microsoft continues to violate antitrust laws and therefore should face tougher antitrust sanctions than have been proposed in a settlement with the Justice Department and nine other states.
The Justice Department accord would require Microsoft to allow PC makers to install non-Microsoft products on Windows computers and force the software giant to disclose some technical details about Windows so software developers can make more compatible products.
Dissenters California, Iowa, Utah, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Kansas, Florida, Minnesota, West Virginia and the District of Columbia want Kollar-Kotelly to force Microsoft to create a stripped-down version of the Windows software.
