Judge: E-mail isn't relevant, states' setback
Yahoo | at | by Mike
Nine states suing Microsoft for antitrust violations want the federal judge overseeing the case to consider an internal Microsoft e-mail that advocated retaliation against "unfriendly" computer makers.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly had already decided that the e-mail wasn't relevant after Microsoft objected, but the states want her to reconsider.
In the August 2000 e-mail, Microsoft vice president Joachim Kempin complained that chipmaker Intel Corp. was contacting computer makers "who are not (Microsoft) friendly in the first place and ... encouraging them to go to Linux," a free operating system that competes with Microsoft's Windows.