Thursday, April 16, 2009

DOJ Requests Extension In Microsoft Case

The Justice Department wants to extend the term of certain portions of Microsoft's final antitrust judgment by at least 18 months, according to documents submitted Thursday to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The agency said an extension is necessary to ensure the quality of the technical documentation Microsoft provides to licensees. The agency made its views known as part of its joint status report to Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly who has been handling the high-tech giant's case. The DOJ antitrust division is charged with enforcing the final judgment in conjunction with officials from 17 states and the District of Columbia, which along with Microsoft joined in the filing.

In 2006, Microsoft agreed to a two-year extension of the communications protocol licensing program contained in a section of the final judgment, along with all of the final judgment's enforcement provisions. The company also agreed that the department and state antitrust enforcement agencies could ask for an additional extension of all or part of the extended provisions of the final judgment for a period of up to three additional years, through November 2012, according to DOJ. In the filing, the Obama is exercising its right to seek an extension of a certain section through May 12, 2011. Otherwise, the final judgment would have expired on Nov. 12, 2009.

The section in question requires that Microsoft make available to competing server software developers, on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, certain technology used by Microsoft to make its server operating systems interoperate with client PCs running the Windows operating system, DOJ said. Microsoft also must provide licensees with technical documentation to help them to use the technology. In past status reports, the department raised concerns with the quality of the documentation Microsoft was providing and the length of time it was taking to improve that documentation. In 2008, National Journal's Technology Daily ran a series of stories examining the impact of Microsoft's epic antitrust battle nearly a decade after it began. View a PDF of that special coverage here.