Microsoft and the US Department of Justice are putting significant pressure on the last remaining holdouts--Massachusetts and two trade groups--to back off their appeal of the antitrust settlement.
On Wednesday, Microsoft filed two briefs in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit opposing Massachusetts' claim that the appeals court misapplied the law when it approved the settlement between the software giant and the US Department of Justice last November. Microsoft and the DOJ also slammed two industry trade groups for interfering with the case and asked that their proposals for more stringent remedies be tossed out.
Microsoft's second brief claimed that an appeal waged by two industry groups--the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and the Software Information Industry Association (SIIA)--is baseless and that the groups have "no right to participate in this case as interveners".
The news comes just a day after West Virginia--one of two states that appealed the court-approved settlement last December--pulled out of its appeal and settled with Microsoft.
Microsoft urged Massachusetts and the two trade groups to follow suit.
"Only Massachusetts and a couple of groups of Microsoft competitors are continuing with their efforts to impose overreaching and punitive terms that the District Court has already determined would harm not just Microsoft, but the software industry and the economy as well," according to a statement issued by Microsoft. "The District Court's decisions have been agreed to by the Department of Justice and virtually every state that filed lawsuits against Microsoft."
Opponents believe that Microsoft--convicted of violating two sections of the Sherman Antitrust Act following a three-year legal ordeal--got off too easy when it brokered a deal with the DOJ under the Bush administration in late 2001.
Nine states originally filed an appeal seeking harsher penalties than those contained in the agreement, but most of them backed away from the case when US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly approved the original settlement deal with little modification.
Microsoft Wednesday got backing from the DOJ, which filed its own brief rejecting attempts by the CCIA and SIIA to seek harsher penalties against the software company.
"The Microsoft settlement is in the public interest, and the Department remains committed to actively enforcing its terms," according to a statement released by the DOJ attributed to R. Hewitt Pate, assistant attorney general in charge of the Department's Antitrust Division. "The District Court properly rejected CCIA and SIIA's attempt to intervene in this case. Following painstaking review of the record, the District Court correctly found that the Department fully complied with the Tunney Act procedures and that the settlement was in the public interest."
The Massachusetts attorney general has no intention of backing off, regardless of West Virginia's decision or the briefs filed today, a spokeswoman for the attorney general said on Wednesday.
"Nothing has changed with West Virginia's decision to withdraw from the Microsoft appeal. Last year we made the decision to appeal the Microsoft ruling and pursue a remedy that will protect consumers, bring back competition and ensure corporate accountability," according to a statement issued by the Massachusetts Attorney general's office yesterday.
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