DoJ asks to oversee Microsoft for 18 more months
updated 04:20 pm EDT, Thu April 16, 2009
DoJ Extending MS Oversight
The US Department of Justice and individual attorneys general today filed an official motion (registration required) asking Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to further extend her monitoring of Microsoft's compliance with a 2002 antitrust ruling. The request would add another 18 months to the original term, which would have stopped watching Microsoft's actions in November. Department officials hope preserve the quality of technical information published as part of the company's penalty.
In the original trial, Microsoft had been accused of refusing to publish programming interfaces that would let third-party developers have the same access to Windows as Microsoft itself, giving the Redmond, Washington-based developer an unfair advantage that would let it integrated software more closely with Windows than possible for competitors.
The oversight sanctions against Microsoft had already been extended until November 2009 under the belief that Microsoft might retaliate against those using the documented code by discouraging stores from carrying non-Microsoft software that takes advantage of relevant code.
Microsoft hasn't responded to this latest extension request.
