Judge extends Microsoft vs. Department Of Justice consent decree by at least two years

Redmond (WA) – It has been almost years since the Department of Justice and 19 states filed antitrust against Microsoft and the company had hoped that the case would finally come to a conclusion. However, a judge yesterday ruled that certain provisions outlined in the final judgment have not been met by Microsoft and extended the timeline of the case by at least two years.

In the end, it came down to § III.E requirement of the consent decree, which Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said, have never been met by Microsoft. This section states that

“Microsoft shall make available for use by third parties, for the sole purpose of interoperating or communicating with a Windows Operating System Product, on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms (…), any Communications Protocol that is, on or after the date this Final Judgment is submitted to the Court, implemented in a Windows Operating System Product installed on a client computer, and used to interoperate, or communicate, natively (i.e., without the addition of software code to the client operating system product) with a Microsoft server operating system product.”

The Final Jjudgment was issued in November of 2002 and both parties agreed that Microsoft would be able to release this technical documentation by February of 2003. According to the Court, “the technical documentation envisioned by that Section is still not available to licensees in a complete, useable, and certifiably accurate form”. Kollar-Kotelly noted that “Microsoft has never complied with § III.E”, but recently “proposed a plan that now appears to be producing the type of quality technical documentation required by § III.E,” because of “mounting pressure from all Plaintiffs and the Court.”

As a result, the Final Judgments were extended until November 12, 2009. Additionally, the Plaintiffs have the right to request a three-year extension of certain provisions of the Final Judgment until November 12, 2012. “At that point, certifiably complete, accurate, and useable documentation will, presumably, be available to licensees, and the Court will be in a far better position to evaluate § III.E’s,” Kollar-Kotelly stated.

Microsoft disagreed with the findings. “We will continue to comply fully with the consent decree. We are gratified that the court recognized our extensive efforts to work cooperatively with the large number of government agencies involved. We built Windows Vista in compliance with these rules, and we will continue to adhere to the decree’s requirements,” said Brad Smith, general counsel at Microsoft in a prepared statement.