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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (27527)	7/16/1999 7:20:00 PM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

Microsoft Cleared in Bristol Case -reason behind MSFT rally.. By Jack McCarthy A jury today cleared Microsoft of antitrust violations in a lawsuit brought by Bristol Technology, a small software vendor in Connecticut that claimed Microsoft let a contract lapse to prevent Bristol from creating software that would run on a rival operating system. The lawsuit, filed last August in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport, Conn., charged that Microsoft behaved anticompetitively when it allegedly refused to renew Bristol's Windows NT source-code license on reasonable terms. Bristol prevailed on one count: the jury found that Microsoft violated the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act, but awarded the company just one dollar. In closing arguments this week, Bristol lawyers had asked the jury to award the company up to $263 million. A Microsoft spokesman said the verdict represented an important vindication of the business practices of the software giant, which is fighting other antitrust lawsuits brought against it by the U.S. Justice Department and by Caldera, a developer of software that runs on the Linux operating system. "We believe the verdict represents an important victory for the entire industry, not only Microsoft, by upholding the rights of companies to license their technology in a fair and equitable manner," said spokesman Jim Cullinan. "While the verdict is positive in this case, it will also have a positive impact on the other cases." The Bristol verdict won't have a direct legal impact on the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust case against Microsoft, but it's still a damaging decision for the government, say antitrust experts. "It surely takes the wind out of the government sails," said Hillard Sterling, an attorney at Gordon & Glickson PC in Chicago. "The DoJ must be concerned that its own case suffers from the same fatal flaws." The Bristol verdict may help Microsoft's battered public image. "I think a lot of people in the public arena ... assumed that Bristol's fate and the DoJ's fate would be similar," said Harvey Saferstein, an antitrust lawyer at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson in Los Angeles. "There will be some fallout." Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, the trial judge in the Justice Department case, is certain to take notice of the Bristol case, as will any appeals court. The Bristol decision shows that "reasonable decision makers can find an absence of anticompetitive effect, notwithstanding unfair business practices," said Sterling. "Microsoft may be in violation of unfair trade practices, but is still in compliance with general antitrust" laws, he said. During the trial, Bristol argued that the expiration of the licensing contract in September 1997 drastically reduced sales. Bristol sells cross-platform development products that allow Windows applications to run on other operating systems. Its key product, WIND/U, lets companies port applications from Windows to Unix. Bristol lawyer Patrick Lynch said in closing arguments that Microsoft let the contract lapse to discourage use of the Unix operating system, which rivals Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. But Microsoft lawyer David Tulchin called Bristol executives greedy for bringing a lawsuit over what he said was a contract dispute. Microsoft still faces antitrust charges in a lawsuit brought by Caldera, as well as a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department and 19 U.S. states. The Caldera case is slated to go to trial in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Jan. 17, 2000. Meanwhile, closing arguments in the high-profile Department of Justice lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia are scheduled for Sept. 21, with a ruling expected months later. Jack McCarthy writes for the IDG News Service.