Legal Update

Microsoft filed an aggressive brief to kick off its appeal of the unfavorable lower court decision in the Department of Justice (DoJ) antitrust case. The Nov. 27 document, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, not only disputed the legal judgment handed down by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson in the U.S. District Court but also pointedly criticized his conduct during and immediately following the case.

As expected, the 150-page brief disputed the lower court’s application of the Sherman Act and other antitrust law to the case and pleaded that the court’s extreme verdict to split the company was unsustainable. Among the key points Microsoft made were the following:

• Microsoft cannot control prices or exclude competition in the operating system (OS) market, and therefore does not enjoy monopoly status as defined in antitrust law.
• Consumers benefited when Microsoft integrated Internet Explorer (IE) into its OS, and therefore this was a competitive move demanded