Read all about it here (you’ll need Acrobat). It is, natch, a huge opinion, but there’s quite a lot of good stuff starting at about page 106, wherein the panel discusses exactly what a turd Judge Jackson was. Thanks to his egomania, MS could very well have got off scot-free.
You can find the html version here.
Despite the title of this thread, however, the D.C. Circuit did not affirm the finding of monopolization:
In other words, the appeals court held that Microsoft did (to some extent) attempt to monopolize the OS market, and that it might have illegally “tied” its browser to Windows. However, the court rejected the finding of attempted monopolization in the browser market.
All in all, it knocked out much of the wind behind the sails of break-up.
Yes-yes-yes, Minty, it’s only partial but the fact that any part of Jackson’s decision remands standing is almost miraculous. No appellate court should have to spend months reviewing a district judge’s factual findings just to determine whether he so compromised his independence that the baby, bathwater, bathtub, and bathroom all have to be thrown out.
Boring-lawyer-pedantry follows Oh, and on a technical point, the court actually upheld four of the six individual counts of illegal monopoly power, thus amply supporting Jackson’s broader conclusion of illegal monopoly. The attempted-monopolization claim falls out completely, but the tying claim remains to be relitigated. That should be fun.
Isn’t this why Jackson separated the findings of fact from the findings of law? I seem to remember that in initial arguments before the appeals court, the judged attacked Microsoft’s lawyers for failing to challenge the findings of fact that pretty clearly say that MS was a monopoly on several fronts. Since the findings of fact are nearly invulnerable now, the Appeals court had no choice but to agree in principle while sabotaging Jackson’s remedy.
Jackson. What an ass. Hugely important case for the country, the economy, and new technological world we live in, and we get an outcome based on the faults of his ego, not on the law.
I’m still expecting the Dubya administration to drop this case like the pro-business anti-consumer chickensh*t outfit it is…
That’s actually not so worrisome: the appeals court left more than enough meat on the original findings of fact and of law that anyone else wishing to sue Microsoft for antitrust violations can start in court by saying “given that Microsoft is a predatory monopoly…”
OxyMoron, perhaps you could expound on the idea of “courts of competent jurisdiction”, which I believe is the legal concept here. Since the appeals court let stand the finding that Microsoft is an abusive monopoly, any other court case against MS on those grounds can treat that as a proven fact and go from there.
Here is something else you might want to expound on…
“What concerns the state attorneys general is that in its new strategies, known as .Net and Hailstorm, Microsoft has been aggressively pushing to link its new consumer and business offerings to the next version of its operating system, Windows XP. The .Net strategy appears to mirror Microsoft’s intent of the mid- 1990’s. That is when it pulled the Web browser down into the operating system as a competitive response to Netscape, which was moving to become a significant threat by making the browser an independent platform that would run software in much the way that an operating system does. Now .Net aspires to reverse the strategy of the 1990’s by tying operating system functions more tightly to the Internet. This raises the possibility that Microsoft will dominate the Internet as completely as it dominates the desktop computer industry.”
Source:
FYI: within minutes of the announcement, I saw the leader of the States’ lawsuit, Iowa Atty General Tom Miller, on TV proclaiming that he would continue to pursue a breakup of MS. I completely agree with him. MS has never obeyed any consent decree in the past, which was why the Fed Circuit Court did not even consider behavioral restrictions, and went straight for structural reform.
[nitpick]District Court, not Circuit Court. The Federal Circuit doesn’t get to hear this case. [/nitpick]
[blatant hijack]Speaking of the Federal Circuit, the Supremes have taken Festo (again). Woo-hoo![/blatant hijack]