Microsoft, States Reveal Antitrust Witnesses

WASHINGTON--Executives from several of Microsoft's largest rivals will offer their views of the software maker's anticompetitive behavior, and provide input for what remedy a federal court should impose in the government's antitrust case against the company, according to court documents.

Microsoft also listed top executives from corporate supporters who might be called to testify, along with economists, legal experts, and professors who could be defense witnesses. Bill Gates, Microsoft's founder, chairman, and chief software architect, and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive officer, are on the defense witness list, as are 11 other executives from various company divisions and subsidiaries. Hearings in the remedy phase are scheduled for March 11.

Microsoft and the coalition of nine state attorneys general suing the company filed a joint pretrial statement in federal court listing both defense and plaintiff witnesses in the long-running antitrust suit. Those states have refused to sign a proposed settlement reached between Microsoft and nine other states and the U.S. Department of Justice, and continue to pursue stronger remedies against the company for its monopolization of the operating system market on Intel-based PCs.

The plaintiffs' witnesses include two executives from AOL Time Warner, economists, and computer science professors, as well as lawyers and technology officers from Sun Microsystems, Palm, Gateway, SBC Communications, RealNetworks, and Red Hat.

Stiffer Penalties Sought

The holdout states have proposed that Microsoft be required to sell a version of Windows without Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, Microsoft Outlook e-mail, or Microsoft Media Player software. Those states also want the source code for Windows and Internet Explorer to be available to Microsoft competitors and to have a guarantee that Microsoft Office business productivity software will be compatible with other software.

Microsoft took exception in the latest filing to the states' demand for open access to Windows and other source code without cost. "By depriving Microsoft of its valuable intellectual property, the non-settling States' remedy would eliminate Microsoft's incentive to continue to invest in improving those products," Microsoft wrote.

Microsoft characterizes the states' proposed remedy as seeking to advance the commercial interests of Microsoft's competitors. "Those competitors would like nothing more than to see Microsoft hobbled, without regard to the interests of consumers," wrote Microsoft in the filing.

Wounded Rivals Listed

Each company on the states' roster has had trouble with Microsoft in the marketplace, whether in getting Sun's Java program shipped with PCs or in getting AOL's Internet service icon displayed on desktop screens. Witnesses will weigh in on what kind of remedies Microsoft should provide.

One of the potential witnesses is Peter Ashkin, Gateway's former chief technology officer and AOL's current president of product strategy. He is expected to testify that Microsoft used licensing agreements for its Windows operating system for PCs, along with fear of retaliation and other incentives, to coerce PC manufacturers to support Microsoft's platform and applications instead of competing products, according to the joint filing.

Jim Barksdale, president of the Barksdale Group venture capital firm and former chief executive officer of Microsoft's Web browser rival Netscape, is also listed. He is expected to testify that software companies have found it hard to get venture capital funding if their products compete with Microsoft, and that Microsoft has a history of anticompetitive behavior, according to the joint filing.

Richard Green, Sun's vice president and general manager for Java software, is likely to tell the court that Microsoft's decision not to include Java in its latest operating system, Windows XP, is anticompetitive, and could testify to the effectiveness of the states' proposed remedy to foster competition, according to the joint filing.

Microsoft's Rebuttal

Several of Microsoft's defense witnesses were enlisted specifically to rebut testimony from the plaintiffs.

Steven Silva, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Charter Communications, could be called to testify that Microsoft's opposition to the Open Cable Application Platform--a standard for interactive television set-top boxes--didn't keep the cable industry from adopting it, according to the joint filing. Silva could also testify that Microsoft is a small player in the supply of software for television set-top boxes compared to Liberate Technologies.

Mitchell Kertzman, Liberate's chief executive officer, is a witness for the plaintiffs.

Microsoft also plans to bring in John R. Johnston, a partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm August Capital, to counter Barksdale's testimony, and Gregg Sutherland, senior vice president for corporate strategy from Qwest, to respond to the testimony of Larry Pearson, product design manager for the Operations division of SBC, according to the filing.

Pearson is likely to testify that Microsoft threatens to make SBC's unified messaging product inoperable with Microsoft's Windows-based standards, according to the filing.

Other possible defense witnesses include Jerry Sanders, chairman and chief executive officer of processor maker Advanced Micro Devices, who could testify that the balkanization of Windows would undermine the PC ecosystem, harming consumers and a variety of companies, according to the filing.