The government's lead attorney in the antitrust case against Microsoft struck back Monday at full-page advertisements the software giant is running criticizing the trial.
The advertisements repeat Microsoft's view that the trial brought by the US Justice Department and 20 states is irrelevant and that the marketplace takes better care of consumers. The ads appeared in major newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal.
Government attorney David Boies said the advertisements ignores the trial's central issue: whether Microsoft's monopoly in computer operating systems was preventing the personal-computer market from developing fully.
Microsoft (MSFT) is accused of illegally maintaining its monopoly in the personal computer operating-system market and using that monopoly to compete unfairly against Netscape Communications (NSCP) for Internet browser software.
Last week, Netscape was acquired by online service America Online (AOL) in an all-stock deal valued at $4.2 billion.
In the ads, entitled "The March of the Marketplace," Microsoft argued that the "lesson of the past week is that the market will take care of consumers better and faster than government ever can.
"Consumers keep winning because competition keeps thriving, prices keep falling, and the high-tech economy keeps growing," the ad said.
Boies told reporters during a break in the trial that he agreed there was competition in the high-tech industry but that was not the issue before the court.
"The issue is, is there anything ... in that merger that is going to affect the core issue that is involved in this case, which is the operating-system monopoly that Microsoft has and uses in unfair and exclusionary ways to prevent new competitors in the PC operating market from developing," Boies said.
In court, Microsoft's cross-examination of government economic expert Frederick Warren-Boulton continued Monday and was expected to last through Tuesday.
Now entering its seventh week, the trial has heard from seven of the government's 12 witnesses. An equal number of Microsoft witnesses remain to be questioned.
The government expects James Gosling, a vice president of Sun Microsystems (SUNW), to begin his testimony on Wednesday.
In a side deal to the AOL-Netscape merger, Sun will develop and market Netscape e-commerce software that makes it easy to do business on the Web.
At the beginning of Monday's session, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson said there would be no court session on Monday, 7 December.
Copyright© 1998 Reuters Limited.
