That led Murray of Microsoft to declare that Allchin's "150-page testimony has now gone into the record virtually untouched." He added, "The government is working very hard to create a mood in the courtroom while we are trying to create a legal record."
Spin, spin, spin.
Microsoft originally spun this case by saying that, to win, all they had to do was rely on that Court of Appeals Consent Decree decision that is supposed to magically save the day for them. Recall Neukom's boasts when the case was handed down that, thanks to that decision, they had the new antitrust case in the bag. It was all but over before it even started; the government's case is extremely weak, he said. Some didn't drink that kool-aid, even on this thread we said it wasn't so and pointed out why. But Microsoft was able to convince Wall Street and the world otherwise.
I do not mean to be too harsh on their lawyers, but their belief that they had the case in the bag shows in oh so many ways. Whether it's shoddy expert testimony by an obviously unprepared economist, or going "on the cheap" with a bunch of in-house witnesses, or bringing to court a videotape that was not adequately vetted, or a lay witness basically having his head handed to him on the one issue that really matters to Microsoft's current legal strategy, all of these things create the distinct impression from out here that Microsoft "knew" it was going to win, and so it arrogantly did not bother to prepare its own case adequately.
Now they are trying to spin themselves out from under the fact that Boies has just punched a great big hole in their strategy of relying on their sacred Court of Appeals decision. The test articulated in that case has proven a lot harder to meet than I suspect anyone at Microsoft ever imagined.
Unless they are planning to change their legal strategy, the issue for them isn't how many pages of Allchin's testimony gets into evidence unscathed, but is simply whether the Court of Appeals' test for distinguishing an "integrated product" from an illegal tie has been met. Right now, from out here in the peanut gallery, it looks like there is a lot of evidence that it has not, and frightfully little evidence that it has. |
