Microsoft is clearly taking its upcoming appeal against the European Commission very seriously.
The software giant has hired three former EU judges to stage a mock trial.
The trial conducted in January in New York contained a former Belgian justice minister, Melchior Wathelet, who worked for
the European Court of Justice (ECJ) -- Europe"s highest court and two other un-named judges.
In 2004, the EU ruled that Microsoft must provide protocol details to third party companies and fined the Redmond based company 500 million euros.
Microsoft would not confirm or deny that it had hired the former judges.
"As
is typical for an important case, we have our counsel present our case
to a variety of different lawyers in private practice. We have found
this helps ensure that the highly technical material is presented
clearly," it said in a statement.