Sun Injunction Reversed; Patent Suit Progresses

An appeals court has vacated an injunction that would have forced Microsoft to ship Sun Microsystems’ Java Virtual Machine (JVM) with Windows PCs, while also limiting Microsoft’s ability to distribute its own JVM (the MSJVM), which is incompatible with Sun’s. The decision will effectively end native Java support in Windows XP, although some OEMs (Dell, Hewlett-Packard) have chosen to include Sun’s JVM. The decision could make it harder for consumers to access Web-based Java applications, but will have little impact on Java’s core market in business applications, as the necessary client code is usually distributed with these applications.

Separately, a judge has issued a ruling that seems to favor Intertrust in its patent-infringement lawsuit and criticized Microsoft’s attorneys for wasting the court’s time, and a settlement has been approved for a California class-action antitrust lawsuit.

Java Injunction Vacated

The appeals court threw out an injunction levied in Dec. 2002 by District Judge Frederick Motz, who is overseeing a private antitrust case filed by Sun, Be, Burst.com, and consumers who bought certain Microsoft software through the company’s Web site (AOL recently dropped out of the case). Motz reasoned that the emergency injunction, which required Sun’s JVM to be shipped with new copies of Windows XP, was necessary to prevent the nascent market for middleware from “tipping” away from Java and toward Microsoft’s .NET development platform.