Microsoft Offers Its Interpretation of Antitrust Law

To no one’s surprise, Microsoft’s Proposed Conclusions of Law in the Department of Justice (DoJ) antitrust trial assert that the company has not violated the law, as the DoJ claims. While Microsoft’s filing treads dangerous ground, by taking issue with what Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson has already established as “facts” in the case, it also probes at the weakest points in the DoJ’s case. Microsoft is unlikely to escape an unfavorable verdict, but its proposed conclusions of law may tilt the court away from radical remedies, such as the “dismantling Microsoft” scenarios that are currently popular.

No Illegal Tying

Microsoft continues to assert that Windows 98 and Internet Explorer (IE) are a single product rather than two products the company illegally tied together by forcing customers to take IE in order to get Windows. To support its case, Microsoft cites heavily from a 1998 judgment in which an appeals court overruled Judge Jackson and said Microsoft only had to prove that integrating the browser and OS offered “plausible benefits” to consumers.