Microsoft Court Case
The facts of the case
18 States and the Justice Department brought suit against Microsoft to "eliminate Microsoft's unlawful practices, to avoid recurrence of similar practices and to restore the competitive threat that middleware products posed prior to Microsoft's unlawful conduct.
The procedural history of the case
Microsoft grew the government’s attention in 1991, because word was that it was abusing its monopoly in the PC operating system market. The government had the FTC conduct an inquiry and was at an impasse with a 2-2 vote and closed the investigation in 1993. The DOJ opened its own investigation later that same year and in 1994, Microsoft consented not to tie other products to the sale of Windows, but had the option to integrate additional features into the operating system.
Judge Jackson issued his findings of fact on November 5, 1999, which stated that Microsoft's dominance in its computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly, and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly, including Apple, Java, Netscape, Lotus Notes, Real Networks and Linux. The decision was divided in two pieces and in April of 2000, the judge issued his decisions that Microsoft had committed monopolization, attempted monopolization, and was trying in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the …show more content…
2 of the Sherman Act by taking on an anticompetitive means to keep a monopoly in the operating system market. The District Court's judgment that Microsoft violated Sec. 2 of the Sherman Act by unlawfully trying to monopolize the Internet browser market to contain Netscape’s Navigator browser and Sun’s Java technologies browser, was reversed. The judgment that Microsoft violated Sec. 1 of the Sherman Act by unlawfully tying its browser to its operating system was kept in place. Microsoft was ultimately ordered to be split into two
18 States and the Justice Department brought suit against Microsoft to "eliminate Microsoft's unlawful practices, to avoid recurrence of similar practices and to restore the competitive threat that middleware products posed prior to Microsoft's unlawful conduct.
The procedural history of the case
Microsoft grew the government’s attention in 1991, because word was that it was abusing its monopoly in the PC operating system market. The government had the FTC conduct an inquiry and was at an impasse with a 2-2 vote and closed the investigation in 1993. The DOJ opened its own investigation later that same year and in 1994, Microsoft consented not to tie other products to the sale of Windows, but had the option to integrate additional features into the operating system.
Judge Jackson issued his findings of fact on November 5, 1999, which stated that Microsoft's dominance in its computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly, and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly, including Apple, Java, Netscape, Lotus Notes, Real Networks and Linux. The decision was divided in two pieces and in April of 2000, the judge issued his decisions that Microsoft had committed monopolization, attempted monopolization, and was trying in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the …show more content…
2 of the Sherman Act by taking on an anticompetitive means to keep a monopoly in the operating system market. The District Court's judgment that Microsoft violated Sec. 2 of the Sherman Act by unlawfully trying to monopolize the Internet browser market to contain Netscape’s Navigator browser and Sun’s Java technologies browser, was reversed. The judgment that Microsoft violated Sec. 1 of the Sherman Act by unlawfully tying its browser to its operating system was kept in place. Microsoft was ultimately ordered to be split into two