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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Marvin Mansky who wrote (16613)	5/25/1999 10:10:00 PM
From: E_K_S	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Judge Says Microsoft Infringed On Copyright Technology News (05/25/99, 7:38 p.m. ET) (http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19990525S0018) By Amber Howle, Computer Reseller News The U.S. District Judge handling the Sun vs. Microsoft trial Monday issued three tentative rulings. Judge Ronald Whyte gave a tentative order declaring that Microsoft, in Redmond, Wash., practiced "copyright infringement" against Sun Microsystems, in Palo Alto, Calif. According to Whyte, Microsoft's distribution of software products containing an implementation of the Java virtual machine that failed to pass a Sun test suite, "exceeded the scope of the copyright license" granted in their agreement and constituted "copyright infringement." Whyte also struck down Microsoft's counter motion regarding Sun's copyright-infringement claim. The issue is presently on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco and oral arguments are scheduled for June 16. The other two rulings were in Microsoft's favor. Microsoft was tentatively granted a summary judgment regarding independent development. Whyte declared that the Java license agreement does not prohibit Microsoft from independently developing technology that directly competes with Sun,as long as it makes no use of Sun's intellectual property. Whyte tentatively denied a motion by Sun regarding a provision of the licensing agreement. Sun said it would be "nonsensical" to interpret the section as a warranty, and that its most current Supplemental Java Classes would execute on a prior reference implementation that lacked the required functionality to run them. A decision on Microsoft's counter motion is still pending. All of Monday's rulings are tentative and do not impact last November's preliminary injunction against Microsoft, which, among other things, forced it to use JNI in its Java products. Oral arguments from both Sun and Microsoft on these latest rulings are slated for June 24. Spokespeople for both Sun and Microsoft acknowledged that the rulings are tentative, and that each looks forward to arguing them. Sun sued Microsoft in the fall of 1997 for breaching its Java licensing agreement. Sun said Microsoft was "polluting" the technology to create programs that run only on Microsoft's operating system, when Java was created to be compatible with all operating systems. ==================================================================== Today's judgement may creatig buying in SUNW shares tomorrow. EKS