DOJ to Extend Oversight of Microsoft by Two Years

Published: May 17, 2006

by Alex Woodie

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) indicated last week that it will seek a two-year extension of the program to monitor Microsoft compliance with the landmark 2002 antitrust ruling. The DOJ's actions were another legal setback for Microsoft, which has recently experienced a resurgence in scrutiny from government regulators over its business practices, particularly in Europe.

In legal papers filed Friday, the DOJ expressed displeasure with Microsoft's efforts to abide by the consent decree that requires it to help other software companies write programs that work with the so-called "communications protocols" in its Windows Server operating systems. The lawyers used terms such as `"disappointing'' and "not very encouraging" to describe Microsoft's actions regarding the decree.

If U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly agrees to the extension--and government lawyers said they would be very surprised if she didn't--it will extend the DOJ's oversight to at least November 2009. The increased scrutiny was previously scheduled to end November 2007. There's a possibility the oversight could be extended even further, through 2011.

Microsoft took the application in stride, and was critical of its own past failures. "Microsoft today has voluntarily agreed to extend for two additional years part of the U.S. consent decree," its general counsel, Brad Smith, stated in a press release issued Friday.

Microsoft also took the opportunity to showcase its varied efforts to facilitate greater industry collaboration.

"Microsoft is also announcing today that it has decided that, even after the expiration of these provisions of the consent decree, it will continue on a voluntary basis to document and license the communications protocols in the Windows desktop operating system that are used to interoperate with Windows server OS products," the statement attributed to Smith said.

What's more, Smith said Microsoft will announce a new interoperability lab where "licensees can test and de-bug their protocols and obtain easy access to on-site Microsoft engineering assistance."

The Redmond, Washington, software giant also hailed the benefits that an additional two years of oversight could do for its documentation, which has been lambasted by European regulators as being gibberish and purposely confusing. Microsoft said "the extension . . . will enable all the parties involved to take the time necessary to establish an over-arching specification that will govern the way in which technical documentation is written."