Microsoft fights legal skirmishes, as battle with DOJ looms

Microsoft Corp.'s lawyers must be saying TGIF today, after a flurry of legal activity related to several of the cases it is involved in. While none of the cases pack the import of the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust action against the company, each may affect that case.

The cases, brought by Caldera Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq:SUNW) and Bristol Technology Inc., all allege anticompetitive behavior by Microsoft. When the judge in the MS/DOJ case, Judge Thomas P. Jackson, recently ruled that he would consider any evidence collected as part of the discovery process in these cases, he upped the potential importance of the Sun, Caldera and Bristol suits.

"What [DOJ special counsel David] Boies is doing is bringing in other issues as evidence of a pattern of conduct on Microsoft's part," explained Tony Clapes, Bristol co-counsel and member of the Technical Law Network, a Honolulu-based network of high-technology lawyers. "He [Boies] is not seeking any new damages or relief."

Instead, he continued, Boies is ensuring that alleged anticompetitive violations raised in the Sun, Caldera and Bristol cases can be used to prove Sherman Act violations. Clapes characterized this tactic as "just standard legal practice."

The Caldera case, which now alleges that Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) illegally tied its DOS operating system to Windows 95, is the oldest, but Microsoft nonetheless wants it delayed. It plans on Monday to ask the judge in the case to push back the trial from its current June 1999 start date.

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Meanwhile, both Microsoft and Sun say they have no problem with revealing the results of the final arguments they made in their trial, which was conducted as a closed hearing. In that case, Sun alleges Microsoft violated the terms of its Java license, in part to cripple the spread of Java.

Bristol, a Unix tool-porting vendor, accuses Microsoft of having improperly denied it access to source code for Windows NT. Microsoft today will file a response to Bristol's request for a preliminary injunction forcing it to give up that code.

Sm@rt Reseller's Mary Jo Foley contributed to this story.