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BALTIMORE -- A federal court judge Friday denied Microsoft's motions to dismiss the private antitrust lawsuits brought by Be and Burst.com.

Later on Friday, U.S. District Judge Frederick Motz will hear Microsoft's arguments supporting motions to dismiss 13 of 16 claims in an antitrust lawsuit filed by Sun Microsystems.

Be is alleging that Microsoft harmed the company through illegal acts designed to maintain its monopoly in the Intel-compatible PC operating system market, and that the company made deals with PC manufacturers that prohibited them from selling PCs with multiple preinstalled operating systems.

One of Microsoft's lawyers argued Friday morning that Be had other opportunities to distribute its operating system on PCs besides as a dual-boot system with a boot loader and an icon through OEMs.

Singing Like Sinatra?

"This claim is kind of like the Frank Sinatra claim," said Microsoft counsel Michael Shepard, referring to the singer's signature tune "My Way." He added, "They said they didn't get to do it exactly like they wanted to do it, and they don't have any other meat to the claim."

Microsoft also argued before Motz that neither Be nor Burst.com were as directly affected by Microsoft antitrust violations as other companies had been.

Motz is presiding over a number of private antitrust cases as well as several class-action lawsuits that have been filed against Microsoft. In December, he approved a preliminary injunction forcing Microsoft to distribute Sun-compatible Java technology in every copy of Windows and Internet Explorer it ships. Microsoft has said it intends to appeal that decision.

Sun's antitrust suit, filed in March, charges that Microsoft used its monopoly in the PC operating system market to thwart the adoption of Sun's version of Java.

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