I hope it will not be politicians who are going to decide future of technology...
<<In pursuing the appeals strategy, Microsoft wants to delay the case and play out the clock in hopes of getting a better deal with a new president and new attorney general after President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno leave office in January 2001, analysts said.
Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the GOP presidential frontrunner, for example, is a close friend of Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Bob Herbold and said at a conference of high-tech executives in Arizona last month his administration would "always take the side of innovation over litigation."
Microsoft clearly would be looking for similar actions from a Bush adminstration that businesses got from the Reagan administration in 1981. Reagan's antitrust enforcer William Baxter brought a more pro-business tilt to his policies and dropped the decades-long case against IBM.
The only major case that did go forward under Baxter was the breakup of AT&T.
Neukom hinted that a play-out-the-clock strategy was in the works when he told reporters that if the case went to the Supreme Court, it would be 2003 at the earliest before it was resolved.
Microsoft, which gave $1.3 million in donations to Congressional campaigns in the last election cycle, is also lobbying GOP members of Congress to cut the budget of the Justice Department's antitrust division, which sued the company and it is spending millions funding grassroots lobbying efforts in 19 individual states whose attorneys general also joined in the historic lawsuit.
Legal experts say it will be difficult to reverse Jackson's findings of fact in higher courts and Microsoft will open itself to hundreds of lawsuits from high-tech companies unless it settles quickly with the government.
But Microsoft's lawyers are expected to base their appeal on their belief that Judge Jackson was biased against Microsoft from the very outset and ignored large areas of evidence presented by company attorneys at the trial.
The appeals court, dominated by Republican pro-business appointees, "is likely to be a friendlier place," for Microsoft, said William Kovacic, an anti-trust expert at George Washington University, because it has already overturned a key ruling from Jackson ordering Microsoft to separate its Internet Explorer web browsing software from Windows95.
Many state attorneys general said they will continue to pursue strong sanctions against Microsoft, regardless of what happens in Washington.
"If they abandon the case, then it's pretty clear what would happen - the 19 states would continue it ... If somehow a new administration wants to settle or dismiss the case, the states are not going to settle it, except on terms that they accept," said Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller.
Added Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal: "Very emphatically and unequivocably, we will stay in this lawsuit as long as it takes to reach remedies that correct Microsoft's predatory business practices." >> |
