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States Near End of Case without Addressing Consumer Concerns
This week, the non-settling states brought their last witnesses to court. Two competitors -- SBC Communications and Sun Microsystems, and two experts - a computer science professor from Princeton and a Berkeley economist -- failed to demonstrate that the suing states' proposed penalties would help consumers or the technology industry in any way.
On Thursday, the states' final witness, University of California at Berkeley Professor of Economics Carl Shapiro dramatically refused to give his support to the states' centerpiece sanction, the forced removal of code from Windows that would create so-called modular versions of Windows that would seriously impair its functionality. The day before, another academic, Professor Andrew Appel of Princeton University, provided testimony that never touched on the consumer impact of the proposed sanctions. The judge has indicated she would pay close attention to the expert testimonies and the states' experts failed to address and rationalize key aspects of their remedy proposals.
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=search&StoryID=802191
Earlier in the week, the competitor contradictions continued when SBC Communications employee Larry Pearson alleged that his company faced unfair challenges from Microsoft in the arena of Internet communications products, which is not part of the antitrust case. Microsoft introduced an email in which SBC said that it already had a three-year lead on Microsoft in this field.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-000025245apr09.story
Sun Microsystems again appears to want the courts, not competition, to determine how new web services emerge.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-000025463apr10.story
Next week, Microsoft will begin its portion of the case. Unlike the states, Microsoft will focus on the consumer impact of the states' proposed sanctions. Microsoft, together with the U.S. Department of Justice and nine states, has reached a settlement in the historic antitrust case that will help consumers, promote competition and enable innovation to continue throughout the technology industry.
Keep up-to-date on the trial and contact your public officials to share your views about the case and other important technology issues.
www.microsoft.com/freedomtoinnovate
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