[Am-info] Microsoft refuses to yield in case

[Erick Andrews]

"Won't back down as judge is left to devise remedy"

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/171/business/Microsoft_refuses_to_yield_in_case+.shtml

"[W]ASHINGTON - A federal judge's eleventh-hour attempt to get the two sides in the
Microsoft Corp. antitrust trial to narrow their differences came to an end yesterday
with the software giant refusing to yield even as nine states offered some tentative
concessions. 

"The failure to bridge the wide gap over remedies for Microsoft's antitrust violations left US
District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly with the task of devising a remedy of her own, a
judicial chore that may take weeks because of the voluminous record made in the trial.

"With the trial that began in mid-March winding down, the judge on Tuesday had given
the lawyers a highly unusual mandate as they finished preparing for yesterday's closing
arguments - the final event in the proceedings until the judge rules.

"Each side, she said, was to assume for the sake of the hearing that she was going to
reject the opposing proposals as written, even though she said she had not made up her
mind to do that. But, on that basis, she asked, what might they accept from the other
side's plan, or how might they modify their own to make it more acceptable to their
opponent?

"Microsoft's lead lawyer, John L. Warden of New York City, took only seven minutes to
reject all facets of the nine states' remedies - proposed sweeping changes in the
company's software design and marketing practices.

" ''It's a tightly integrated whole,'' he said of that plan, ''and we can't fix it.'' It could not be
made acceptable, he added, ''by changing a few words here and there.'' [...]"

----------------------------------------------------------
Now this bit at the end YOU JUST GOTTA LOVE:
----------------------------------------------------------

"A Microsoft attorney, Dan Webb of Chicago, denounced the states' proposals as a raid on
Microsoft's copyrighted software designs that would stifle the company's incentive to
create products, and lambasted the proposed requirement of a stripped-down version of
Windows as one that would ''force Windows off the market'' because it is not possible, as
a matter of software engineering, to create such a product."

----------------------------------------------------------
Yeah, sure.  I don't know if MS has enough money to put another man on the moon, 
but puh-leeze don't tell me they haven't enough money to "fix it" or that "it is not
possible...to create such a product".

-- 
Erick Andrews