Microsoft Case Is Set for Trial in September nytimes.com
Avid follower of the O.J. trial for technoweenies that I am, I missed the fact that a trial date was set, not just a hearing on a preliminary injunction. I don't know if I like that, years of entertainment may be curtailed.
Microsoft had asked the judge to schedule a hearing on the government's request for a preliminary injunction in January 1999, with a full trial at some later point. Government officials had complained that Microsoft seemed intent on delaying the case so long that Windows 98, the updated operating system that is the target of the lawsuits, would already be in use in tens of millions of offices and homes.
Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson suggested that he was sympathetic to the government's argument, particularly after John Warden, a Microsoft lawyer, told him that starting next week, computer manufacturers would begin shipping Windows 98 to customers at a rate of about 2 million copies a month. . . .
New York Attorney General Dennis Vacco added, "Microsoft has suffered a crushing legal defeat by now having to defend our request for preliminary relief and our antitrust lawsuits on the very same Sept. 8 trial date."
Microsoft, on the other hand, said it took comfort in the fact that the judge had not granted the government's original request for a preliminary injunction hearing next month. That might have interfered with the launch of Windows 98.
"Although the Department of Justice and the states asked the court for injunctive relief before June 25, the court determined there was no need to take any action before the consumer release of Windows 98," said William Neukom, senior vice president for law and corporate affairs for Microsoft. "We are looking forward to an exciting Windows 98 launch that delivers this innovative new product to millions of consumers without any cloud of government intervention. We will use the time the court has provided to marshal all the facts and legal arguments, and we will present a very powerful case."
A very powerful case, replete with innovative legal strategy to explain how all that email doesn't mean what any normal reader of the English language might take it to mean. A meaning friends and foes of Bill alike would all agree on, outside of this particular context. Neukom will probably show us it was all written in Microsoftese, a language superficially similar to English, where war is peace, ignorance is strength, and Windows is open.
Cheers, Dan. |
