Thanks Keldyn for the heads up here. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly warned Microsoft Friday that it must comply with whatever ruling she imposes as punishment for the company"s antitrust violations. The strong rebuke came on the final day of hearings to determine whether the judge will consider any of the strong remedies recommended by the so-called nine nonsettling states, which have refused to sign onto a proposed settlement Microsoft made with the US government and nine other states.
"I hear that Microsoft will make every effort to comply [with my ruling]," Kollar-Kotelly told Microsoft attorneys Friday. "I would expect that is going to be the case. These are the kinds of things that will come back to haunt you, because I will have a memory of all these statements."
Microsoft executives and lawyers have said repeatedly that the company would comply with whatever remedial decree the judge created. But the Judge"s comments were no doubt inspired by Microsoft"s violation of its 1995 consent decree with the federal government, in which it agreed to not bundle applications with Windows. The company then integrated Internet Explorer (IE) with Windows 95, an act that was later found to have been completed in order to illegally thwart competition from Netscape. This violation eventually led to a federal lawsuit and a sweeping guilty verdict in the company"s historic antitrust trial.