Appeals Court in Richmond, Va., Kills Order to Microsoft on Shipping Java
Jun. 27–The federal appeals court in Richmond yesterday killed a Baltimore judge’s order that Microsoft Corp. must start shipping Sun Microsystems Inc.’s Java software as part of its Windows computer operating system.
U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz in January gave Microsoft four months to include Java in Windows, but that order was put on hold after Microsoft appealed to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals here.
Java is a programming language designed to run on all computers regardless of operating system.
Motz is the trial judge in the antitrust lawsuit Sun filed against Microsoft. His order was a preliminary one, intended to prevent imminent and irreparable damage to Sun while the case is tried.
Yesterday a three-judge panel of the appeals court vacated the order, concluding that Motz’s findings “are insufficient to support [his] conclusion that immediate irreparable harm” would result without it.
In addition, the panel ruled that the order’s purpose has not been sufficiently linked to the relief Sun seeks in its claim that Microsoft “has illegally maintained its monopoly in the market for worldwide licensing of Intel-compatible PC operating systems.” The appeals court panel sent the case back to Motz for continued adjudication.
At arguments in April, a Microsoft attorney argued that the order was “unprecedented and extraordinary” and should not have been issued because no evidence had shown any “imminent irreparable harm” would come to Sun if Microsoft does not distribute Java.
A Sun lawyer argued that the extraordinary order was needed since this is an extraordinary case “because of Microsoft’s anti-competitive conduct.”
Sun’s case is one of four private antitrust lawsuits that followed another federal court’s ruling, in a case filed by the federal government and 18 states, that Microsoft holds an illegal monopoly in desktop computer operating systems.
Judge Paul V. Niemeyer wrote yesterday’s opinion and judges Roger L. Gregory and H. Emory Widener Jr. concurred.
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(c) 2003, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
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