Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Uncle Frank who wrote (28024)	8/9/1999 12:36:00 AM
From: Ian Davidson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

From the WSJ: August 9, 1999 Microsoft to Argue U.S. Failed To Show It Acted as a Monopoly By JOHN R. WILKE Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL WASHINGTON -- Microsoft Corp. will argue the government hasn't shown that the huge software company is a monopolist or that it has restricted the distribution of competing products. In a final round of filings Tuesday with U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson here, both sides will lay out the facts they believe have been shown during the company's antitrust trial. On Sept. 10, each will have a chance to answer the other's filing; closing arguments in the case are due Sept. 25. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on the filings. They are expected to run hundreds of pages, covering the factual points both sides pressed in the case, which began last Oct. 19. Microsoft will argue that the U.S. case ignores the competitive and fast-changing nature of the industry and the many threats the company faces from America Online Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc. and others. The company's lawyers briefed reporters on their court papers late last week. In the filing, Microsoft is also expected to argue that the government failed to show that competing Internet-browser software was foreclosed from the market by contracts Microsoft imposed on its Internet partners or PC makers, its most important distribution channel. Instead, Microsoft will argue that its rival was able to distribute millions of copies of its software. In its lawsuit last year, the government said Microsoft embedded Internet software into its dominant Windows operating system to crush rival Netscape Communications Corp., later acquired by AOL. Microsoft will respond that its Internet software is fully integrated with Windows and that the government's attempt to remove the browser simply hid access to it, leaving it in place and damaging Windows. Microsoft also will argue that the integration provides substantial consumer benefits. It will cite pretrial testimony of a Boeing Co. executive to support this claim. An appeals-court ruling last year asserted that Microsoft need only show "plausible" consumer benefit when it adds new software functions to Windows. Monday's issue of the New Yorker magazine, meanwhile, portrays Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates as refusing to give ground on the issue of adding new features to Windows. "We've always wanted to settle this thing," he said, but didn't want to be forced to go back to the government every time a rival complained that something new in Windows hurt its business. "You have to have a business left when you settle," he said.