U.S.-Microsoft antitrust deal to get temporary extension
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Procedural move would give judge more time to decide whether it's necessary to impose on Redmond a lengthier watchdog period, as recently advocated by a number of state prosecutors.
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European antitrust regulators said Monday they have extended their review of a deal between Microsoft Corp. and Time Warner Inc. to make anti-piracy software together.
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The U.S. Department of Justice said it will not seek to extend the restrictions placed on Microsoft&#39;s business practices following its antitrust settlement with the U.S. government in 2002.Many of the restrictions are due to expire Nov. 12, and last week several&#160;U.S. states filed motions&#160;in favor of extending them for a further five years. Four of those states -- New York, Maryland, Louisiana and Florida -- had previously said they opposed an extension.The DOJ had also opposed the extension, and on Friday it made it clear that it would not be making a turnabout like the four U.S. states.&quot;The United States will not file a motion to extend its Final Judgment as it does not believe that the standard for such an extension has been met,&quot; the DOJ said in a court filing with the U.S. District Court, District of Columbia.The restrictions were part of the 2002 &quot;consent decree&quot; that settled the U.S. government&#39;s case against Microsoft. They prohibit Microsoft from retaliating against PC makers that install its competitors&#39; software, or licensing its software to them on unequal terms.Another requirement -- that Microsoft license its APIs (application programming interfaces) to let rival products interoperate with Windows -- has already been extended for two years.The DOJ didn&#39;t explain its decision Friday. In August it said it felt the&#160;judgment had been successful&#160;in preventing Microsoft from continuing its exclusionary behavior.The&#160;states who favor an extension&#160;disagree. They say operating systems haven&#39;t evolved as quickly as people thought they would in 2002, and that Microsoft could still use the dominance of Internet Explorer to choke competitors in the emerging Web 2.0 world.A status hearing that will likely address extending the restrictions is scheduled for Nov. 6 with District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.The other states pushing for an extension are California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia.Separately, last month the&#160;DOJ raised hackles in Europe&#160;by criticizing the European Union&#39;s decision to reject Microsoft&#39;s appeal of its antitrust decision there.&#160;
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Microsoft Corp  said on Monday that it controls 92.6 percent of Norwegian search software firm Fast Search &amp; Transfer , and extended its takeover offer to Thursday from a Friday deadline.
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Consumers and businesses in California  will have until Jan. 8 to claim their part of a $1.1 billion  class action settlement with Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O after the  California Superior Court awarded an extension, plaintiff's  attorneys said on Thursday.
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The Financial Times reported yesterday that Microsoft paid the Computer and Communications Industry Association $19.75 million earlier this month to settle an antitrust suit, and that the association&#39;s top official received $9.75 million of that amount.
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A U.S. judge said today she favors an agreement on desktop search between Microsoft and antitrust plaintiffs.
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Microsoft Corp  said on Monday  that it controls 92.6 percent of Norwegian search software firm  Fast Search & Transfer , and extended its takeover  offer to Thursday from a Friday deadline.
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Latest chapter of antitrust case has U.S. government and software giant requesting an extension on 2002 settlement.
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A federal courtâs oversight of Microsoft has been extended through January to give a judge time to consider a motion to extend that oversight for another five years.
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(InfoWorld) - A group of state plaintiffs in the U.S. Microsoft antitrust case will ask for a five-year extension of a large portion of the 2002 judgment against the company, the group's lawyer said Tuesday. California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia -- known as the "California group" -- want an extension of most of the middleware portions of the judgment, said Stephen Houck, a lawyer for the group. Microsoft still retains a huge lead in the operating system and Web browser markets, he said. "Microsoft continues to have a stranglehold over the two products ... that nearly all consumers use," Houck said during an antitrust compliance hearing in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. "Very little has happened in five years ... in those markets." The California group of states -- the larger of two groups of states that sued Microsoft for antitrust violations -- will ask for an extension of all the middleware portions of the antitrust judgement, except for a section that governs the royalties Microsoft can charge PC manufacturers for the Windows operating system. Most of the antitrust judgment was scheduled to expire in November. Microsoft lawyer Rick Rule said the company would need time to respond to Houck's proposal. Microsoft first heard of the plan to ask for an extension on Friday, he said, and the California group plans to file a formal extension request with the court in mid-October. Rule seemed to suggest Microsoft would fight the five-year extension. U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly declined to impose a 10-year judgment in 2002, he said. "We think the picture of the computer industry is much rosier," Rule added. "We think it's clear that the decree has done its job." Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans said the company will respond in more detail after it has seen the extension request. "We're a bit surprised that a few states are now requestingÂ an extension of the consent decree because they indicated just last month that they're not too fond of it," Evans said. In August 2006, Microsoft already agreed to an extension of the section of the judgment requiring it to make its communications protocols available to other software vendors. Microsoft's efforts to fix technical documentation for the protocols have run into several delays. Houck on Tuesday asked Kollar-Kotelly to extend the communications protocol section of the judgment until 2012. The California group does not "have any confidence" Microsoft will continue to improve the communications protocol program without oversight, Houck said. An independent auditor's report just issued questions whether Microsoft has released all the protocols mandated in the judgment, he added. The California group's extension proposal comes afterÂ the U.S. Department of Justice and the New York group of states filed briefs last month saying the antitrust judgment has done its job. "There have been a number of developments in the competitive landscape ... that suggest that the Final Judgments are accomplishing their stated goal of fostering competitive conditions among middleware products, unimpeded by anticompetitive exclusionary obstacles erected by Microsoft," said the report from the DOJ and New York group, which includes five states. But Houck disputed that assessment on Tuesday. At the time of the judgment, a handful of PC vendors were preinstalling a competing Web browser on PCs, he said. Today, no major ones are, he said. In addition, the communications protocol program was supposed to be finished early in the judgment's life, and its delays have kept software vendors from fully using the program, Houck said. "The whole thing ... doesn't have an opportunity to work as the court intended," he said. "It's very clear that the product markets at issue in this case have not moved rapidly at all." Kollar-Kotelly said she would delay final reports on the judgment while she considers the California group's request. Microsoft and the plaintiffs were scheduled to meet with her Nov. 6 to discuss the final reports, but she will now consider the extension request on that date. Before Houck made his request, the judge said she was opposed to extending the judgment without a good reason. It was hard to predict the impact the judgment would have, she added. "The final chapter of the final judgment has not been written," Kollar-Kotelly said. The California group wants Kollar-Kotelly to extend all of section 3 of the judgment except for section 3B, dealing with manufacturer royalties. The extended provision would include: *Â A prohibition against Microsoft retaliating against PC vendors for including competing software on PCs; *Â A prohibition against Microsoft restricting PC vendors from putting competing middleware in the start menu or making them defaults; *Â A requirement that Microsoft give APIs for its middleware to PC vendors and independent software vendors.
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(InfoWorld) - The latest status report on Microsoft Corp.'s compliance with an antitrust settlement in the U.S. has cleared the company of a separate accusation of not complying with orders to disclose information to make its products more interoperable. An expert witness in a class-action suit filed in Iowa, Comes v. Microsoft, testified that the company had not documented APIs (application programming interfaces) as required by the 2002 settlement with the Justice Department and states. The plaintiffs from the 2002 settlement met with the expert witness in the Iowa case and examined material, concluding that "there is no evidence that Microsoft has not fully disclosed the APIs." The conclusion was tucked away in the report, published on Tuesday, by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which monitors Microsoft's compliance with the settlement. Microsoft reached a settlement in February in the Comes case, filed in Polk County District Court, after plaintiffs argued the company overcharged them for software. In April, a judge gave preliminary approval to a settlement that calls for Microsoft to pay up to US$179.95 million to individual users and businesses that bought Microsoft software between May 18, 1994, and June 30, 2006. The case is due for a final review on Aug. 31. If approved, eligible Iowans will be able to receive $16 for OSes; $29 for Office, $25 for Excel and $10 for Word. Individual users will get cash, while volume buyers will get vouchers for products from Microsoft, its competitors and others. Microsoft estimates the cost of Iowa settlement, as well as settlements reached with Arkansas and Wisconsin in March, plus an outstanding case in Mississippi, could cost the company between $1.7 billion and $1.9 billion, according to an April 26 filing with the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission. Â
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Microsoft Corp. said in court Thursday that it had been prepared during settlement talks to share more software code with its rivals than the European Union ultimately demanded.
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(InfoWorld) - The 2002 antitrust settlement between Microsoft and the U.S. government has yielded several benefits for consumers with competing Web browsers, multimedia applications, and Web-based services flourishing since the agreement, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday. The DOJ, in an 11-page report, said the settlement seems to be working, despite questions from critics. "There have been a number of developments in the competitive landscape ... that suggest that the Final Judgments are accomplishing their stated goal of fostering competitive conditions among middleware products, unimpeded by anticompetitive exclusionary obstacles erected by Microsoft," said the report, from the DOJ and the group of states led by New York that sued the company. Among the DOJ's evidence that the settlement is working: Increased competition to Internet Explorer from other Web browsers, such as Firefox and Opera; the popularity of Apple's iTunes and QuickTime and Adobe's Flash for handling multimedia content; the increasing use of Web-based services for e-mail and other applications; and the decisions by hardware vendors like DellÂ to offer Linux preloaded on their computers. Apple introduced QuickTime in 1991, long before the antitrust lawsuit. Hardware vendors have been preloading Linux on computers dating back to the late '90s. "To be sure, none of the products mentioned ... have to date resulted in a dramatic reduction in Microsoft's PC operation system market share," the DOJ report said. "The Final Judgements were targeted to reinvigorating competitive conditions that Microsoft had suppressed, not to slicing off some part of Windows' market share." Microsoft, in a statement, said the judgment has fostered competition. The judgment "defined clear rules for how Microsoft competes without preordaining winners in the technology marketplace," Brad Smith, Microsoft's senior vice president and general counsel, said in the statement. "The [judgment] shaped how we view our responsibilities and led us to adopt a set of voluntary principles that will continue to apply even after major parts of the U.S. antitrust ruling expire this November." The judgment and competitive principles Microsoft has adopted "provide the industry and consumers with the benefits of ongoing innovation by Microsoft, while creating and preserving robust opportunities for competition," Smith added. Microsoft, in its own antitrust status report issued Thursday, said competing middleware products continue to "proliferate." Seven top PC makers preinstall an average of 35 non-Microsoft software products before shipping them out, the Microsoft report said. Other groups have questioned the benefits of the settlement. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, has at times questioned the benefits, even though she approved the judgment. In a hearing in February 2005, Kollar-Kotelly questioned "what, if any, effect" the judgment has had on the software market. Another group of states led by California that also sued Microsoft and has been critical of the judgment is scheduled to release its own report by Friday. A status report on Microsoft's antitrust compliance is scheduled before Kollar-Kotelly on Sept. 11.
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Microsoft&#39;s compliance with a&#160;U.S. antitrust settlement&#160;will remain under court supervision for another two years, in part because the company delayed producing documentation required by the court, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
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LONDON -- In a deal that appears to buck the growing trend among governments to adopt open-source alternatives, the U.K.'s Office of Government Commerce (OGC) is negotiating a renewal of a three-year agreement with Microsoft Corp.
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Microsoft Corp. renewed its offer Monday to resume negotiations with the European Union in their five-year antitrust battle, saying it would do so immediately after a court rules this week on whether to suspend an order forcing the software giant to change its business practices.