Netscape is asking for a jury trial and is seeking damages but did not specify an amount in the lawsuit, filed in US District Court for the District of Columbia. However, the lawsuit does ask for triple damages based on the Clayton Act and the District of Columbia Code, as well as interest and attorneys fees. Netscape also asked for an injunction against Microsoft's alleged antitrust violations, both current and future. The judge in the case ultimately would decide the nature of the injunctive relief, which Netscape suggested could be derived from a remedy proposal filed last year by nine states and the District of Columbia. One option: forcing Microsoft to release a version of Windows without its own middleware products such as a Web browser, media player or instant messenger. Bob Lande, a professor at the University of Baltimore Law School, sees the Netscape suit as unique in some ways. "This is fundamentally different from the couple of hundred other private suits filed against Microsoft because it's not just arguing over money," Lande said. "Here they're asking for injunctive relief that could change the way the high-tech market looks and change the nature of competition in the market. There is really tremendous public interest in which way this thing comes out." Rich Gray, a Silicon Valley lawyer closely watching the Microsoft antitrust trial, had a mixed response to the lawsuit. "On the one hand, it's a dramatic development. But on the other, it's not a surprise," Gray said. He noted that US District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's "findings of fact" issued in November 1999 "provide a road map directly to this lawsuit". There are also competitive reasons for filing the lawsuit now. AOL and Microsoft "are in a death struggle for ownership of the consumer in the digital world", Gray said. The original case
The Justice Department and 20 states filed their antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft in May 1998, but only 19 states pursued the case. One more state dropped out last year. The suit alleged that through a variety of business tactics--exclusive contracts and integrating the Internet Explorer browser with Windows 98, among others--Microsoft used its monopoly power to squash Netscape. The government argued that Microsoft believed Netscape could develop into "middleware" that could eventually replace Windows. The government also asserted that Microsoft used anti-competitive means to preserve its monopoly. These arguments and evidence introduced by the government resounded with Jackson, who presided over the trial. "Through its conduct toward Netscape, IBM, Compaq, Intel, and others, Microsoft has demonstrated that it will use its prodigious market power and immense profits to harm any firm that insists on pursuing initiatives that could intensify competition against one of Microsoft's core products," Jackson wrote in his findings of fact in November 1999. Jackson concluded that Microsoft's actions prevented consumers from having more choices and innovations. "Many of the tactics Microsoft employed have also harmed consumers indirectly by unjustifiably distorting competition," he found. Although lawyers have filed more than 100 private lawsuits on behalf of consumers, the government's case actually does a better job bolstering civil lawsuits brought by competitors. Gray estimated damages could be anywhere "from the hundreds of millions to the billions of dollars". In the quarter ended 31 December, Microsoft set aside $660m (£462m) to cover the potential cost of settling the class-action suits pending against the company. Still, Microsoft has nearly $40bn in cash. While the Netscape lawsuit "piggybacks on the findings of fact and conclusions of law the government spent years determining", the goal is much broader, Lande said. "In some ways, they want to retry the whole and get at the things the government left out." In the June 2001 appeals court decision, seven judges threw out Jackson's order that would have broken Microsoft in two. The court also sent back to retrial the allegation that Microsoft had illegally tied--or integrated--its Web browser with the operating system. The Justice Department decided not pursue either matter. The court also dismissed a claim Microsoft illegally tried to extend its monopoly to the browser market. "It's an interesting strategic choice," Lande said. "They're trying to do what the government originally tried to do and couldn't."
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