Microsoft should comply with future order in antitrust case - judge

US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said lawyers for Microsoft Corp should make sure their client complies with any order that she issues regarding a remedy for the company's violations of US antitrust law.

"I would expect that is going to be the case," Kollar-Kotelly said, adding "these are the kinds of things that will come back to haunt you if, in fact, you don't because I will have a memory of all these statements."

The comments came at the close of three days of questioning from Kollar-Kotelly on several motions filed by the company before she listens to closing arguments on June 19.

Microsoft attorney Charles "Rick" Rule, a former antitrust official at the Justice Department, assured Kollar-Kotelly that Microsoft would do everything in its power to comply with the ruling in a discussion centered on the enforcement provisions of her future order.

But John Shenefield, lawyer for the nine states and the District of Columbia that refused to sign the Nov 2001 settlement, offered his vision of an enforcement mechanism, which assumed that Microsoft would seek to avoid compliance through delay and other legal maneuvering.

"If you have a monopoly power and you are making a lot of money...there is very little incentive" to change behavior, Shenefield said, adding "the big problem here is forcing Microsoft to adhere to a judgment that it hates."

Rule said it is "inappropriate to assume that Microsoft is not going to follow the order" and that "there is simply no basis in this record, or anywhere in the world, for that."

Kollar-Kotelly criticized the states plan because she said it did not sufficiently encourage settlement talks for any future disputes.

"I would not want to set up a model that did not include ... some incentive to settle," she told Shenefield, adding the states proposal should be characterized as "basically an adjudication procedure" and not something that includes mediation options.

Microsoft's plan would set up a three-person technical committee that would encourage voluntary restraints if the states complain about future behaviour, while the states' plan allows other companies to complain to a single "special master" who would have the power to settle disputes.

Late last year, Microsoft and the Justice Department agreed to settle their four year-old antitrust dispute, which found the software company illegally maintained its operating system monopoly.

Only half of the 18 states that were suing the company alongside DoJ signed that deal, which cannot become law until Kollar-Kotelly signs it. The coalition of attorneys general from around the country that did not sign the deal are pushing her to throw it out and impose a stricter remedy.

States that rejected the government's settlement with Microsoft and have continued to pursue the antitrust case are California, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Utah and West Virginia, along with the District of Columbia.