Microsoft antitrust case Hearing
C|Net | at | by Mike
The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday conceded that it settled with Microsoft in part because trustbusters failed to prove part of the basic theory of the antitrust case. In his presentation before U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, Justice Department lead attorney Philip Beck said that Microsoft was able to hold on to a monopoly in Intel-based operating systems only through anti-competitive acts. But the government was not in a position to make that argument stick, he said.
In the public-interest hearings, Microsoft and the settling states are scheduled to make presentations later Wednesday. A number of third parties also are scheduled to make 10-minute presentations to the court, among them the American Antitrust Institute, telephone company SBC Communications and the ProComp trade group. AAI receives funds from Microsoft competitor Oracle, while ProComp is backed in part by AOL Time Warner, Oracle and Sun Microsystems.
Even in conceding the limits of the government's case, Beck emphasized its successes. "It was a major victory and accomplishment," he said. But in looking at the language of the appeals court decision and what the Justice Department was able to obtain through the settlement, the government is satisfied that it cut a deal that is in the public interest and that exceeds the mandate of the court of appeals, Beck said.