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Echoing the confident tone Microsoft has used over the past months, on Tuesday the software company called both the federal and state antitrust charges leveraged against it "completely groundless."
It was Microsoft's first formal, point-by-point response to the charges filed by the Department of Justice and 20 attorneys general in May. In the months following the filing, Microsoft has engaged in its own public relations counter-response, with opinion pieces by Bill Gates in The Wall Street Journal and homespun commentary on its own Web site.
Microsoft said it will issue a complete statement of its position by 10 August. In a summary, the biggest announcement was a countersuit against the government bodies that alleges the suits undermine the company's intellectual property rights under federal law.
Microsoft claims it planned to combine its Internet Explorer browser with the Windows operating system long before rival Netscape existed. The government has charged that the tie-in between the two components was part of a wide-ranging, deliberate attack on Netscape.
Microsoft did not attempt to "illegally divide the browser market," with Netscape, the statement also said. Instead, representatives of Microsoft met with Netscape twice in 1995 "in order to explore ways in which the two companies could work together to improve their respective products."
Microsoft rejected government claims that Internet service providers and Internet contract providers were forced to exclusively distribute Microsoft software as the result of exclusionary contracts. The "agreements between Microsoft and ISPs have never included an exclusivity provision regarding distribution of software providing Web-browsing functionality," the statement read.
"There is nothing too surprising about today's formal statement," said Joe Sims, an antitrust lawyer with Jones, Davis, Reague, & Pogue in Washington, DC, "Of course Microsoft is going to say, 'We are innocent.'
"What is interesting is the countersuit against the states' attorneys general. Basically, the argument is that none of the state law claims are relevant here because they're preempted by the federal copyright laws," he said. "If this can be proven to be true, it will knock out the claim of the states' antitrust lawsuits," Sims said.
The Justice Department’s only reply Tuesday was that Microsoft’s response contained "numerous misstatements and mischaracterizations. We remain confident in our case and expect to prevail in our trial beginning in September."
