AGs Seek to Further Interests of Corporations, Trial Lawyers

Yogi Berra famously said of the 1961 home run race between Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” Those attending today’s court proceedings should be forgiven if, for a moment, they think it is October of 1998. That is what the nine non-settling state attorneys general would have America believe. They want to try the case all over again and are competing amongst themselves to see who can knock Microsoft further out of the ballpark. Microsoft’s rivals and greedy trial lawyers are in the stands cheering them on.

In reality, the Microsoft case is more than 3-years-old and much has transpired in that time. While far from ideal, the settlement reached between Microsoft, the Justice Department, and 9 states should be the last chapter in this case. There never was a good time to pursue this baseless suit, but continuing it now threatens to undermine early signs of recovery, as well as increase the severity of the technology sector’s 22-month decline.

Unfortunately, 9 state attorneys general, and Microsoft’s rivals in the software industry with whom they consult, do not agree. These 9 state attorneys general seek to impose a far more punitive remedy and are quite prepared to hold the economy hostage until their demands are met. But these demands are not only far beyond the scope of the appeals court’s decision; they are fundamentally at odds with the interests of consumers. Their plan to restrict the functions that Windows can legally offer would be like preventing car manufactures from selling anything more than a chassis with an engine.

Their demands are so extreme that they want to rob Microsoft of the ability to improve its products, while raising prices, discouraging innovation, and burdening consumers in the process. Oddly, their demands sound an awful lot like the wishes of Sun Microsystems, Oracle, and the lot of Microsoft’s most fierce rivals. It’s not clear that consumers are in the picture in so far as the AGs are concerned.

Let’s just hope that these attorneys general don’t get their way. If they do, another Yogi-ism might be more appropriate—“The future ain’t what is used to be.”