Microsoft appeals Java must-carry ruling

Zardon

WASHINGTON (REUTERS) - Microsoft asked a federal appeals court on Wednesday to shelve a lower court order that would force it to start incorporating Sun Microsystems's Java programming language in its Windows operating system.

The world's largest software company filed an emergency motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va. seeking a stay of the Java "must-carry" order until the court considers its challenge of the order.

In the motion, Microsoft's lawyers asked for an expedited hearing of the lower-court ruling, which they called "extreme and unprecedented."

"The injunction will inflict serious harm on Microsoft and Windows, Microsoft's flagship product, that is distributed to many millions of customers throughout the world," Microsoft told the appeals court.

Microsoft is hoping to overturn an order issued on Tuesday by U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz in Baltimore that requires Microsoft to begin putting Sun's Java into Windows within 120 days after the order is entered.

Motz said in an opinion issued Dec. 23 that the Java "must-carry" order was needed to remedy Microsoft's past antitrust violations and level the playing field between Java and Microsoft's .NET Web services software.

Motz said there was a "substantial" likelihood that after a full trial he would impose the order permanently, calling it "an elegantly simple remedy" aimed at preventing Microsoft's past wrongs from giving it an advantage in the market battle for Internet-based computing.

The Java must-carry idea was rejected by another federal judge in the separate government antitrust case against Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft.

The antitrust lawsuit filed by Santa Clara, California-based Sun charges Microsoft has tried to sabotage Sun's Java software, which can run on a variety of operating systems, not just Windows.

In his Dec. 23 ruling, Motz concluded that Sun had a good chance of winning its case against Microsoft and granted a preliminary injunction forcing Microsoft to include Java in Windows.

Motz said the contest between Java and .NET could "tip" in favor of .NET because of Microsoft's past misdeeds. However, he agreed to stay his 120-day requirement for two weeks to give the appellate court time to consider Microsoft's appeal.

Microsoft attorneys argued that Motz's order would be a mistake because Sun had not shown that it would suffer immediate and "irreparable" harm without it.

Microsoft said the potential harm to Sun cited by Motz is "remote" and "speculative."

Without an additional stay from the appeals court, Microsoft engineers will have to start work on putting Java into Windows once the two-week period runs out.

"A stay should be issued here so that this court can determine the merits of the appeal before Microsoft is forced to make changes to its flagship Windows product and to begin forced distribution of Sun's competing product with Windows," Microsoft said in its court filing.

Motz has been assigned cases arising from the landmark government antitrust suit filed in 1998.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in 2001, reviewed the government suit and agreed that Microsoft had illegally maintained its monopoly in the Windows computer operating system but rejected breaking the company in two to prevent future violations.

A settlement of the government suit was endorsed by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in November, although Massachusetts and West Virginia are appealing. Reuters

JLP

I hope the judge is smart and that Microsoft will fail.