johnd: It is amazing that the media is just now figuring this one out:
SUNW FUNDED MSFT ANTITRUST PANEL......
"Sun Microsystems Funded Microsoft Antitrust Panel, Wired Says
Palo Alto, California, Oct. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Sun Microsystems Inc., one of the biggest makers of server computers and a Microsoft Corp. rival in the software market, spent $3 million to assemble a panel of experts to study and present possible ways to charge Microsoft with antitrust violations to the Department of Justice, Wired Magazine reported. The Department of Justice, which at the time was considering whether to charge the No. 1 software maker with violations of U.S. antitrust laws, approved of the project, which was called ``Project Sherman'' after the Sherman Antitrust Act, which restricts companies that dominate certain industries, the magazine reported.
The ``blue-ribbon'' panel included lawyer Harry Reasoner and economists Dennis Carlton and Garth Saloner. It heard from technology industry executives such as Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Novell Inc. and Sun's own Chief Scientist Bill Joy, who didn't know his company was paying for the project, the report said.
The experts then formed a blueprint of charges that would ``make sense'' for the Justice Department to file and presented it to Joel Klein, the antitrust division chief and others. They also presented possible solutions, including a plan to force Microsoft to license its intellectual property to third parties. A Justice Department official told the magazine the project was helpful in convincing the government that ``what we were doing wasn't crazy,'' the magazine reported. "Could the case be thrown out? Maybe this is true, and unethical or illegal, and that is why Joel Klein had to leave the Justice department?
What a twist!
JFD |
