Microsoft Appeals Anti-Trust to Supreme Court

wicket2001 writes "The AP is reporting that Microsoft has appealed their anti-trust case to the Supreme Court. Microsoft sent the petition to the high court two days before the case was to be sent to a new judge to decide what penalty the Redmond, Wash., firm should face."

Comments

Very Bad Move

[kajoob]

This decision was upheld unanimously by a very conservative lower court, there is no way the Supreme Court would overturn that. There are no higher judges, but even Supreme Court Justices will respect a lower court's decision if made that emphatically. I expect this to be denied cert, which essentailly means that the Supreme Court has voice their agreement with the lower court's decision without actually hearing the appeal.

What? you can't appeal a movie!

[room101]

"Microsoft Appeals Anti-Trust to Supreme Court"

They may not have liked it, but the movie never mentioned the company Microsoft. I don't see what the Supreme Court will do for them at this point, I mean, it's already in rental anyway.

Working links

[iammichael]

That AP link didn't work for me, so here's some that do:

• AP on yahoo daily news
• C-Net News.com
• CBS Marketwatch

Not really news

[evilpenguin]

The Supreme Court is unlikely to do anything about this. They are unlikely to overturn Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law made by a federal judge and upheld by a circuit court of appeals. They are unlikely to agree to hear the case. This is more a holding action designed to make the whole process as slow as possible.

It will go to the Federal Circuit Court again, to the Appeals Court, and on back to the Supreme Court at least one more time before things are done. Microsoft needs to give the Supreme Court a reversible error or Constitutional issue before the Supreme Court will agree to hear it.

It is interesting (if you are into legal wrangling), but hardly an important story. If the Supreme Court agrees to hear it, THEN it is news!

Re:They have the money to delay.

[hearingaid]

this is a correct analysis.

The Supreme Court will deny the application for a hearing, correctly realizing that the best opportunity for a hearing will be after the remedy hearing. hopefully they will take an expedited appeal from the second trial.

It's all about timing

[reimero]

Unless the Supreme Court rejects the appeal out of hand in the next 2 months and attempted injunctions against releasing Windows XP fail, Microsoft wins, at least in the short term. IANAL, but if I understand legal proceedings correctly, the entire remedy phase is on hold until the Supreme Court rejects the appeal, vacates the ruling out of hand or hears the case. Typically, the Supreme Court takes several months to reach a decision on whether to put a given case on the docket. Microsoft's short-term goal is to extend the case into November, clearing the way for the release of Windows XP. It's a lot harder to put the genie back in the bottle, and both sides know this.

Regardless how you feel about Microsoft, though, this isn't good for consumers. The October release date has become much more than an arbitrary deadline, and XP will be released in whatever condition it's in. (I know, the same can be said about their previous versions of Windows, but this time there's a lot more than PR on the line!)

Personally, I don't think the Supreme Court will even hear the case. There doesn't seem to be any legal ambigity or any untested or controversial legal rulings at stake. A conservative, MS-friendly court ruled unanimously against Microsoft on all counts. As big and powerful as Microsoft is, I think the Supreme Court will simply reject the appeal without comment, leaving it to the lower courts. The Supreme Court doesn't like to get involved unless there are constitutional issues at stake, and there aren't any here.

Re:It's all about timing

[elmegil]

I don't think you understand the legal process very well. Right now, M$ is just asking the Supreme Court to hear their case. That's called a petition for cert (which is short for some latin technical term I can't remember how to spell :-). The Court *does* typically make decisions on cert requests reasonably quickly, so unless they *agree* to hear the case at this point, it's unlikely to be a major delay. Given the situation, many of us agree that it's bloody unlikely for them to hear this case at this time. So it'll go one where the circuit court sent it.

They won't touch it

[alewando]

The Supreme Court hasn't exactly been lying low since the Bush v. Gore fiasco, but they they're not going to touch this one with a ten-foot pole. There's just no need for them to do so.

The Supreme Court's docket is entirely discretionary. They only hear a couple hundred cases every year, out of the thousands that get submitted. It takes years for a case to make its way up to the Supreme Court from the lower courts precisely because the Supreme Court's policy is to let all lower remedies get completely exhausted first and to let all the difficult legal issues receive one or two decisions from below.

They might someday hear a Microsoft antitrust case, but it's not going to be this one right now. Why would they jump into the fray now before the breakup measures are even decided? The case is even dimmer for Microsoft in light of the unanimous circuit court ruling. It's not unheard of for the Supreme Court to overturn a unanimous ruling, but they've almost never gone out on a limb and done so when there were alternatives like waiting for the wheels of justice to turn some more.

Instead of focusing on the Supreme Court, we should be focusing again on the upcoming battles in the district court. While it's decided that Microsoft is guilty of antitrust violations, whether that fact will create any lasting legal or economic ramifications has yet to be seen. It still could go either way: they could be broken up and fined, or they could just get another slap on the wrist with another toothless consent decree.

And with the possibility still open that Microsoft and the DOJ could settle out of court, well, we've got bigger things to worry about.

Re:They won't touch it

[sheldon]

First of all you refer to "before the breakup measures are even decided". I don't know if you haven't been paying attention but... there isn't going to be a breakup.

Even if the SCOTUS decides not to hear the case and it goes back to the lower court for remedy hearings, the appeals court has already made it clear that a breakup was unjustified. This was the one part of the case clearly overturned.

As far as the likelihood of the SCOTUS hearing the case. I don't think you can predict what cases this court will hear and how they'll decide. Certainly not after Bush v Gore.

It's quite possible they might hear this case if for no other reason than to get it over with quickly. The presence of this case is causing a great deal of stagnation in the tech economy and it would be good to finally clear it out of the way.

Re:What? you can't appeal a movie!

[twitter]

...and you should not see a movie with no appeal.

I'd rather have a bannana.

Microsoft appeals to the Supreme Court?

[reimero]

I don't know, I've never found them that appealing...

What if...

[Bonker]

WinXP ships, and the injunction is imposed against it after it has already started to move copies?

My ideas of the consequences - legal minds feel free to correct me:

1. Walmart, Babbages, Everyone else who sells software is required to 'yank' shelf copies to comply with the injunction. Most stores will be slow to comply, and then claim that they sold out before the injunction hit.

2. We'll have a 'limited edition' of WindowsXP in the wild. Pirate copies will run rampant online and on Ebay because 'the most popular OS' cannot be legally bought in stores, and MS will be in the odd position of having to try enforce their own injunction because they can't be seen as encouraging piracy, can they? The other members of the BSA would scream if they did.

3. After a few months, Microsoft will release something like Windows IR (Injunction Release!) online as an 'update' to existing copies of WinMe and Win2k. It will be an Internet Explorer 4.0 type release -- all the funcitonality of a new OS, all the FUD and anticompetitive bullshit, but Microsoft will give it away as a new product just to spite the Fed and its competitors.

4. ANOTHER LAWSUIT over whether or not MS violated the injuction by releasing WinIR (Say that one out loud!)

5. Microsoft releases much of WinIR under their 'shared source' license, locking hundreds, if not thousands of developers into MS-only development. Hey, if it's free, code for it, right?

6. After months and months and months, a judge finally gets the breakup to stick.

7. Because they won't let him make the rules, Bill takes his toys and goes home. Microsoft 'exits' the home operating system market, and concentrates solely on a 'Software as Service' business market. They sell Win200x releases on a yearly basis to people who want or need server software and are too dim to use a *nix.

Re:Absolutely baffling

[Todd Knarr]

They're worried that they might be facing an injunction against shipping WinXP with everything they want buried in it, one forcing them to either not ship or make those things modular so they can be replaced by the consumer if they choose. They figure that by appealing to the Supremes now they can freeze the case's return to the District Court level and any possibility of an injunction until after they've shipped WinXP the way they want it, and that once the thing's in the field it'll be too late for the District Court to do anything about it. IOW, they want to stall until they can present the court with a fair accompli.

Why this should come as no suprise

[stuccoguy]

Microsoft has invested millions of dollars in rolling out Windows XP and .NET. They are well aware that the Justice Department will seek an injunction to stop the release of both of these technologies when the case goes back to the district court for a penalty hearing. They are not about to allow that to happen before XP and .NET are rolled out.

Their delay tactics have already resulted in the demise of the Netscape browser before relief could be granted. They know that if they can roll out XP and .NET before the district court can stop them it will be too late. You can't put the egg back in the shell. The district court will still be able to consider other remedies, but Microsoft will have already been successful in widely deploying new proprietary standards and other agendas such as new activation techniques, killing USB 2.0, strangling MP3, anddiscourage Linux/Windows dual boot systems.

Because these new standards and agendas will have been adopted by other hardware, software and service companies, the district court's ruling will have limited effect on the standards and agendas themselves.

Re:Why this should come as no surprise

[Lumpish Scholar]

They know that if they can roll out XP and .NET before the district court can stop them it will be too late.

So it's completely predictable that they would have taken this step (and others) to try to delay the courts.

What I hadn't heard predicted, though, is that they also may ship XP next month! "Microsoft could send PC makers the final--or gold--code for Windows XP as early as Aug. 15 ... [and] would allow PC makers to sell systems with Windows XP installed in September."

Anything to beat the clock and dodge the bullet.

Re:Man, you're kidding right?

[Vladinator]

I used to. Then I found a machine on pricewatch that was both less expensive and better than the one I had just built. That pretty much ended the days of building my own machines. :-)

The real kicker? My wife has the less expensive machine and I have the three I built. :-)