WASHINGTON, January 28: The US justice department told an appellate court that there was no reason to remove Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig as a special judicial adviser in the Microsoft case.US district judge Thomas Penfield Jackson has already turned down a request by Microsoft to remove Lessig, holding in a strongly worded ruling that the software giant's allegations of bias against Lessig were "defamatory."Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Microsoft Corp chairman Bill Gates accused the justice department of seeking to have the software company "cripple" its products.
Jackson, considering a justice department charge that Microsoft is in violation of a 1995 consent decree, appointed Lessig to help him untangle a central but ambiguous section of the contract.
The judge asked Lessig, an expert on computers, to work with both parties and advise him by the end of May on facts and the law in the case.
Microsoft asked the US court of appeals for the Districtof Columbia circuit to overthrow Jackson'suse of a special adviser.
It said Lessig was biased because months before he became a court adviser the law professor exchanged E-mail with a Microsoft rival, Netscape Communications Corp.
Microsoft argued it would suffer irreparable harm if the appellate court failed to rescind Jackson's decision to have an adviser. But the justice department said in its filing that Microsoft's appeal lacked merit and that the company would not suffer permanent harm.
"The basis of injunctive relief in the federal courts has always been irreparable harm and inadequacy of legal remedies," the justice department said. "Microsoft can adequately protect its asserted right in having the merits of this case resolved" by appealing Jackson's final decision.
That final judgment will not occur before June. Jackson will decide whether the government is right when it says that Microsoft may not tie the sale of its Windows software to its Web browser, or whether the company is right when it says it may integrate the twoproducts.
In the meantime, the appellate court will consider both the Lessig matter and another appeal that Microsoft has brought.
Microsoft responded in a statement to the government's latest filing saying the company believed it had the right to have the case heard by a judge.
"Through the referral of virtually the entire case to a special master, the trial court has put virtually all of the substantive issues into the hands of a private citizen," Microsoft spokesman Mark Murray said. "We believe that is not permitted under the rules,"Microsoft's Gates said the case was about requiring him to hold back the progress of his products."What we have here is a lawsuit about crippled products," Gates told the NationsBanc Montgomery Securities Technology Conference. "We didn't know we were supposed to cripple our products."
TOKYO, January 28: Microsoft Corp and an affiliate of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp said on Wednesday they would develop technical standards to allow compatibility between WindowsCE-based computers and Japan's personal handyphone system.
NTT Central Personal Communications Network Inc and Microsoft had agreed to develop and test the technology at the US software giant's Seattle headquarters, they said.Windows CE is a Windows-compatible operating system designed for handheld personal computers (PCs). The personal handyphone system (PHS), is a cut-rate mobile telephone system for those who do not need a full cellular service.The agreement would allow the development of small Windows-compatible mobile devices with PHS communication functions, the two firms said.Japan's three PHS service providers launched a powerful 32 kilobytes per second (kbps) data communications network service last year, but demand is slow as PHS users need to buy costly data cards to use the service.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
