WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal appeals court Thursday overturned a ruling that would have forced Microsoft Corp. to incorporate Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Java programming language in the Windows operating system.
The three-judge panel in Richmond, Virginia, said a lower court judge had erred by ordering Microsoft to carry its rival's software, a penalty the lower court judge said was necessary to make up for Microsoft's past misdeeds.
At the same time, the appeals judges upheld a lower court ruling that Microsoft had broken a 2001 legal settlement between the companies and infringed on Sun's copyrights. They sent the case back to the lower-court judge, U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz, for further proceedings.
Motz was assigned cases arising from the landmark government antitrust suit against Microsoft filed in 1998. He concluded in a Dec. 23 ruling that Sun had a good chance of winning its private case against Microsoft.
Sun, based in Santa Clara, California, accuses Microsoft of trying to sabotage Java, which can run on a variety of operating systems, because it threatens the dominance of the Windows system.
Full story here:
http://money.cnn.com/2003/06/26/technology/java_windows.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes
The three-judge panel in Richmond, Virginia, said a lower court judge had erred by ordering Microsoft to carry its rival's software, a penalty the lower court judge said was necessary to make up for Microsoft's past misdeeds.
At the same time, the appeals judges upheld a lower court ruling that Microsoft had broken a 2001 legal settlement between the companies and infringed on Sun's copyrights. They sent the case back to the lower-court judge, U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz, for further proceedings.
Motz was assigned cases arising from the landmark government antitrust suit against Microsoft filed in 1998. He concluded in a Dec. 23 ruling that Sun had a good chance of winning its private case against Microsoft.
Sun, based in Santa Clara, California, accuses Microsoft of trying to sabotage Java, which can run on a variety of operating systems, because it threatens the dominance of the Windows system.
Full story here:
http://money.cnn.com/2003/06/26/technology/java_windows.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes
