Source: Yahoo - "A lawyer for the U.S. Justice Department said the antitrust case against Microsoft Corp. should cease, telling a federal judge on Wednesday that the proposed settlement went beyond what could probably be achieved by further litigation. .."
Attorneys for Microsoft and the federal government are seeking to persuade U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly that their settlement is in the public interest despite objections from nine states seeking harsher sanctions.
The settlement terms "go beyond those that we would likely have obtained had we litigated," said Justice Department attorney Philip Beck of the nearly four-year-old case.
Kollar-Kotelly did not give any indication of whether she is inclined to accept, reject or modify the settlement, but questioned some of its features in the opening hour of a hearing that is expected to go into Thursday.
She voiced concern about whether the settlement's definition of some types of software was too narrow and whether the settling parties were correctly interpreting an appeals court decision in June which upheld a lower court's finding that Microsoft had illegally abused its monopoly.
Click here for the full story!
07.03.2002