Microsoft and Sun Microsystems both said on Friday they plan to comply with a judge's order to schedule a settlement conference or mediation in the widely publicized suit over the Java programming language.
The order came down on 29 December. US District Court Judge Ronald M. Whyte ordered Microsoft and Sun to immediately schedule mediation before a magistrate or "some other mutually selected individual."
The ruling is the court's reminder to Sun that the company might not achieve "as complete a victory as the preliminary injunction ruling might lead them to anticipate," said Ken Carson, intellectual-property attorney at Sugarman, Rogers, Barshak, & Cohen in Boston. Carson also helps run the NetLitigation site.
Sun sued Microsoft in 1997, accusing the software king of making changes to the Java programming language and violating its agreement to license Java from Sun. Sun alleged Microsoft was trying to "pollute" the language, which it saw as a potential threat to Windows.
Last November, Whyte said Sun would likely prevail in its breach-of-contract lawsuit and issued a preliminary injunction to stop Microsoft from shipping products with an incompatible version of Java.
In December, Microsoft said it would appeal the ruling. Last month, it released an upgrade of its version of Java for Windows, in compliance with the federal court's ruling.
"The parties could probably achieve a more workable resolution to their dispute than a court could order," wrote Whyte. He said both companies might want to consider "in connection with ... mediation the development of a specification ... for Java that achieves Sun's goal of universality and Microsoft's goal of more efficient performance and ease of coding."
"While the judge seeks to protect Sun's ideal of universality, he also sees the value in Microsoft's efforts to assist developers," said Carson. "This is an attempt by the judge to let Sun know it would be still worthwhile to try to negotiate something."
This is a logical time in the course of the case for the judge to suggest mediation, Carson said.
"The preliminary ruling on legal issues already exists," said Lisa Poulson, spokeswoman for Sun. She said Sun intends to comply with the December ruling.
"In the district court, administrative rules dictate that the courts work to facilitate settlement on as many cases -- and on as many issues within cases -- as possible [to keep the docket manageable]," she said via email.
"Microsoft will comply with the court order," said Jim Cullinan, Microsoft spokesman, in an email. "Microsoft has always said that we are willing to work with Sun to come to an agreement in the best interests of our customers."
The settlement conference hasn't been scheduled, although it's likely to happen soon, according to Poulson.
Poulson said Microsoft's deadline for filing the injunction appeal is 13 January. Sun will then have 28 days to respond.
