Microsoft Defense Enters Third Week

The hearing concerning the antitrust remedy against Microsoft Corp. enters its seventh week on Monday, a week in which the Redmond, Wash., software giant plans to call six witnesses—four Microsoft executives and two witnesses from outside the company.

Microsoft will begin its third week of defending itself against what the company says are unduly harsh penalties sought by nine states and Washington, D.C., all of which have not signed on to the settlement agreement reached between Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Justice. Microsoft will call witnesses to defend its position on issues including the technical feasibility of some of the states remedy proposals as well as OEM provisions and middleware.

Appearing first at U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., will be Gregg Sutherland, senior vice president for corporate strategy at Qwest Communications International Inc., who will testify that Microsoft does not have the ability to impede the development of platform-neutral communications products and services,, according to Microsoft. Following Sutherland will be Rob Short, Microsofts corporate vice president of the Windows Base OS Kernel, who will address the states concerns over Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates concession regarding Windows XP embedded and a modular Windows operating system. Short also will address the consequences to Microsoft of the states proposals regarding interoperability, the company said

After Short, Richard Fade, Microsofts senior vice president of the OEM division, will testify on steps Microsoft has taken to comply with provisions in the proposed settlement the company hashed out with the Department of Justice and the settling states. Fade also will discuss consequences of the non-settling states proposals on Microsofts relationships with OEMs.

Stuart Madnick, a professor of information technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Sloan School of Management and a professor of engineering at MIT, will testify about the technical feasibility of some of the non-settling states proposals. Will Poole, Microsofts vice president of Windows digital media, will testify about media software and issues relating to RealNetworks Inc. And Linda Averett, a product unit manager in Microsofts Windows media platform division, will testify about the interaction between Windows Media Player and the Windows operating system. She also will address issues relating to RealNetworks.