“…by bringing private antitrust suits further up the news
agenda, Sun is likely to encourage more aggrieved parties and
sundry ambulance-chasers to go after Redmond. But as Sun puts it,
the company is “obligated” to look at suing. In his Conclusions of
Law published this week, it was to be expected that Judge Jackson
would come down heavily against Microsoft on the subject of
Netscape, but he also covered Java in some detail, and this is
where Sun’s ‘obligation’ comes in.”
“By concluding that Microsoft deliberately set out to wreck
Java, and even hurt itself in order to achieve this goal, Jackson
could be said to have handed Sun a loaded pistol. The judge
has ruled that Microsoft hurt Java, and therefore cost Sun money,
so Sun’s shareholders could reasonably expect the company’s
officers to look at the likelihood of extracting compensation.”
“Sun does however have a long record of trying to pull the
antitrust strings against Microsoft without (excepting the Java
action) actually putting itself into the front line, and this goes
back to well before the current action.”