Microsoft Judge: 'Why harsher punishments were discounted'

US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said she rejected harsh antitrust punishments for Microsoft because they would unfairly benefit its competitors.

In her strongly worded decision, Kollar-Kotelly said that the remedies proposed by nine state attorneys general were so outlandish that they amounted to an "unjustified manipulation of the marketplace" designed to give competitors such as Apple, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems an "artificial advantage."

In a 344-page decision, Kollar-Kotelly dismissed many of the proposals as based on a misunderstanding of antitrust law and the purpose of 32 days of remedy hearings this spring.

"Microsoft's competitors appear to be those who most desire these provisions and, concomitantly, are the likely beneficiaries of these provisions, while other competitors in the relevant market would not necessarily benefit. In bringing these types of proposals before the court, (the states) again misunderstand the task presently before the court," Kollar-Kotelly wrote.

Richard Green, a vice president at rival Sun Microsystems, testified during the remedy hearing in March that Microsoft's Java Virtual Machine was unfairly incompatible with his employer's. But Kollar-Kotelly said Sun's complaints were merely an attempt to attack a competitor. "The incompatibility of Microsoft's JVM is a non-issue...Mr. Green's testimony is revealed as little more than an attempt to advance Sun-compliant Java technologies through this proceeding," the judge wrote.

Sun representatives took issue with Friday's ruling. Sun's Special Counsel Michael Morris said in a statement: "The weak steps that Microsoft has taken to comply with the requirements already show that the settlement will be ineffective in curbing Microsoft's monopolistic and anti-competitive practices. We believe that the non-settling states have ample grounds to appeal this decision, and we hope they do."

Sun vowed to fight a civil suit it filed in March that seeks more than $1bn in damages and claims Microsoft's monopoly impeded the use of Sun's Java software platform.

"We will continue to pursue our civil case and to cooperate with the European Commission's case against Microsoft to ensure that the company does not continue to use its monopoly position to become the gatekeeper of the internet," Morris said.

AOL Time Warner, another traditional Microsoft adversary, gave a more tempered response to the decision.

"Judge Kollar-Kotelly made a weak settlement stronger, and created some additional protections for consumer choice and competition," said AOL Time Warner General Counsel Paul T Cappuccio. "The effort to constrain Microsoft's monopoly has neither ended, nor been without result."

The most prominent technology companies, including Oracle, Apple, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, Red Hat, Intel and Dell Computer declined to comment on the judge's ruling Friday.

Declan McCullagh writes for News.com