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April 20, 2009
The DOJ (U.S. Department of Justice) has asked a federal judge to extend an antitrust judgment against
Microsoft by at least eighteen months in order to give the software giant enough time to repair problems
in technical documentation required in a communication protocol licensing program.
The DOJ's request comes after the agency asked for an extension of the part of the judgment dealing
with technical documentation more than three years ago. Then in 2007, the DOJ actually opposed an extension of
the entire judgment, even though two groups of states that had joined the DOJ in suing Microsoft had asked
for a five-year extension.
The case has since been 'dragging its feet' and now Microsoft is asking for a break and says it needs
at least an 18-month extension in the case. Some observers think 18 months is too much however, and
that the software behemoth dosen't need more than four to six weeks to complete the tasks at hand.
The two groups of state attorneys general that joined the DOJ in the original antitrust lawsuit also
joined in the request for an 18-month extension as well. The 1998 lawsuit against Microsoft alleged that the
company had abused its monopoly power in the operating systems and Web browser markets, not just in Europe
both internationally as well.
A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company would not comment on the request for an extension, but did point
to the DOJ and state plaintiffs saying in the joint status report that the company has made significant
progress in correcting some of the technical documentation.
The DOJ then filed documents asking Judge Colleen Kotelly of the U.S. District Court of Columbia to
extend her oversight of the Microsoft antitrust settlement.
Originally scheduled to expire in November 2007, the antitrust settlement has already been extended by two years because of complaints about the state of
the technical documentation.
Under the settlement, Microsoft is required to license the communications protocols to other IT vendors
interested in developing server software that works with its Windows operating system. As of March 31, there
were no less than 1,716 identified problems in the technical documentation, according to an antitrust status
report filed Thursday.
The 18-month extension would actually protract the settlement and monitoring until May 2011. The DOJ and
states chose an 18-month extension "because it was long enough to allow for a reasonable degree of confidence
that additional extensions will not be necessary," the report says.
But there are still many that say 18 months is much too long of an extension.
The status report says "it is clear to Plaintiffs that Microsoft has made substantial progress in improving
its technical documentation over the last two years. However, and while the entire project has taken longer
than any of the parties anticipated, the project is nearly complete."
But the status report goes on to say that while the technical documentation templates appear to be
"reasonably thorough and comprehensible," there still remains a lot more work to do.
The plaintiffs expect that there will be thousands of various bugs to fix in the documentation, even
though it appears to be complete, according to the status report.
Source: The DOJ.
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