SJ Mercury: Looking for wisdom and hints of outcome in Microsoft’s antitrust appeal

“Legal scholars always caution against reading too much into
appellate judges’ questions. But what were we to make of it when
Harry Edwards, chief judge of the appeals court, told the
government attorney to assume that software markets tend to create
monopolies. If so, he asked, was this antitrust case all about
protecting a wannabe monopoly so it can replace the current one?
After all, he said, citing evidence from both sides in the case,
technology markets gravitate toward standards.”

“Was Douglas Ginsburg telegraphing anything when he referred to
Microsoft’s “carpet-bombing” of Netscape during the browser war?
Did A. Raymond Randolph, who was in the majority of a three-judge
panel that backed Microsoft in an earlier, related case, just want
to rule outright for Microsoft and go home?”

“The judges didn’t let Microsoft’s lawyer, Richard Urowsky, off
the hook with softballs. They did sound more inclined to accept his
answers, which at times bordered on the absurd, as when he
maintained the knee-slapping fiction that Microsoft doesn’t enjoy a
monopoly. Urowsky… made more than one pair of eyes go wide
when he claimed that PC makers aren’t the software company’s real
customers, that the people who buy the computers are the real
customers. … Actually, Microsoft specifically denies that you and
I are its customers in other courtrooms. As it defends itself
against antitrust suits filed by plaintiff’s attorneys who want to
carve a hunk of flesh from the biggest shark in the sea, the
company is claiming that only the PC makers have the standing to
sue, because they’re the real customers.”

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