Microsoft to Beef Up Legal Training

More Microsoft employees will be required to have training related to antitrust laws, with all of those in the Platform and Services Division (PSD) in line for sessions under a plan detailed in a court document today.

Microsoft and government officials submitted a joint status report to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia as ordered last month by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who is overseeing the government's antitrust case against Microsoft and the company's compliance with terms of the settlement agreement.

Kollar-Kotelly scolded the company's attorneys in October over delays in a project meant to improve technical documentation of Microsoft's communications protocols and also chastised them for a proposal that would have required media-player manufacturers that ship their devices with Windows Media Player to offer that software exclusively. That plan would have been a clear violation of Microsoft's antitrust settlement, but attorneys said at the hearing that the proposal was a slipup made by a low-level employee and that the company quickly caught the error and corrected it.

Report Details

In the report, Microsoft updates its internal compliance policies and procedures linked to the settlement and the ongoing review of how the company is complying with the settlement terms. As part of that, the company says it will beef up training and also implement an online checklist for PSD employees as well as those working in the Entertainment and Devices, or E&D, division. E&D employees will have the training starting next month, with those from both divisions scheduled for multiple sessions through February.

Quarterly mandatory training sessions will continue for new employees in PSD, which as part of a recent corporate reorganization now also includes the MSN unit, and the company will expand that training to those who are new to E&D, the court document says.

Checklist

Thus far, more than 28,000 of Microsoft's 61,000 employees have attended training sessions, including workers from the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America, the company said.

The online checklist will also provide "an additional safeguard for employees in the PSD and E&D organizations to use prior to distributing any external 'beta' agreements, or program specifications to a third party," Microsoft said. "The checklist is designed to flag for legal review any agreement or program involving the Windows Desktop Operating System (or platform components of Windows). ... This proactive tool will provide additional help for employees ... to identify possible issues and obtain advice of counsel before they surface eventually to third parties."

The issue of the proposal requiring media-player makers to ship Windows Media Player exclusively surfaced after a competitor brought it to light. The new online tool will be used by more than 20,000 employees of the company, Microsoft said in the court document, which also laid out an updated plan to address delays in the "Troika" project, which is to speed documentation of communications protocols.

Microsoft, attorneys from the U.S. Department of Justice, and representatives of state attorneys general involved in the antitrust litigation have their next scheduled hearing with Kollar-Kotelly on November 30.