The U.S. Department of Justice has asked a U.S. judge to extend her antitrust judgment against Microsoft by at least 18 months in order to give the company enough time to fix problems in technical documentation required in a communication protocols licensing program.
The DOJ on Thursday filed documents asking Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to extend her oversight of the Microsoft antitrust settlement. The antitrust order, originally scheduled to expire in November 2007, has already been extended by two years because of complaints about the state of the technical documentation.
The DOJ's request represents a reversal from the agency's earlier views on the antitrust judgment. The DOJ, in 2007, opposed an extension of the judgment, even though two groups of states that had joined the DOJ in suing Microsoft had asked for a five-year extension.Under the settlement, Microsoft is required to license the communication protocols to other IT vendors interested in developing server software that works with Microsoft's Windows operating system. As of March 31, there were 719 identified problems in the technical documentation, according to an antitrust status report filed Thursday.
source-IDG
