Antitrust, Antispam, and Other Legal News

Antitrust lawsuits continued to occupy Microsoft’s legal team in the first part of 2003, as the company fought an order to bundle Sun Microsystems’ version of Java with Windows, agreed to make minor changes to Windows to satisfy its antitrust settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), and reached a proposed settlement in a Florida class-action suit.

Microsoft also joined OEM partners in a patent dispute against Lucent Technologies, part of an industry trend toward patent litigation that is likely to take precedence at Microsoft as its antitrust troubles wane, and filed a lawsuit against unknown entities who use its free Hotmail e-mail service to send unwanted commercial messages, or “spam.”

Antitrust News

Java injunction stayed. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has stayed an injunction that would have required Microsoft to bundle Sun’s version of Java with Windows XP by June 2003, and one member of the court, Judge Paul Niemeyer, appeared inclined to get rid of the injunction completely. During a hearing before a three-judge panel in Apr. 2003, Niemeyer suggested that the injunction did not address competition in the desktop OS market, where Microsoft was previously found to have injured Sun through anticompetitive tactics, and said “in order to get relief, you have to be injured in the relevant market.” The injunction was levied in Dec. 2002 by Judge Frederick Motz of the federal district of Maryland, who is overseeing a consolidated private antitrust suit filed against Microsoft by Sun, AOL, Be, Burst.com, and individual consumers.