During a deposition on 8 February, Steven Kuney, the litigating states' lawyer from Williams & Connolly in Washington, DC, pressed Ballmer on the positive aspects of the Microsoft remedy proposal, which is identical to the settlement cut with the Justice Department and nine other states. During the deposition, Ballmer said he would not "know how to comply" with the litigating states' remedy proposal. "I actually think we would need to withdraw the Windows product from the marketplace. That... would be the only way I understand to comply with the proposal as put forward by the non-settling states," he said. At one point in the Allchin deposition, taken on 13 February this year, Steve Houck, an attorney representing the plaintiff states, asked the executive, "What practices do you understand Microsoft was found guilty of?" After a round of objections from a Microsoft attorney, Allchin said, "I believe that we were found that we tried to maintain a monopoly in the PC operating system space." Houck responded, "And is it your understanding that Microsoft did that by engaging in certain practices that the courts have held to be unlawful?" "Yes," Allchin answered. In June 2000, a seven-judge appellate panel unanimously upheld eight separate antitrust violations against Microsoft. Ballmer testified that he did not talk to anyone from the Justice Department in connection with the settlement. One of the conditions of the Tunney Act is that no backroom political deal-making can influence an antitrust settlement.
Think it's all over? The antitrust case against Microsoft can still go back the to Court of Appeals, and then there's the European Commission's investigation... See ZDNet UK's DoJ/Microsoft News Section for the latest headlines.
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