Microsoft scores a victory in Java case

February 18, 1999 — A U.S. district court has given Microsoft Corp. permission to distribute “independently developed” Java products that don’t include technology from Java pioneer Sun Microsystems Inc.

While Microsoft said it has no immediate plans to develop such products, it heralded the ruling as a victory in its ongoing legal squabble with Sun, which has accused Microsoft of trying to “pollute” the Java platform by releasing products that use an incompatible version of the technology.

“This clarification is one step in this overall case, but it is important to the marketplace that innovation not be restrained,” Tom Burt, associate general counsel for Microsoft, said in a statement. “Sun is trying to prevent Microsoft from having the option of developing Java technologies, even without using Sun source code.”

Microsoft maintains that it has no current plans to independently develop Java products, which would likely be built based on publicly available Java specifications. Its actions in court, however, suggest it is considering such a move.

“This is an option that is becoming more interesting in light of Sun’s efforts to limit innovation and make Java a clearly proprietary technology,” Burt said.

The judge’s order has not yet been filed with the district court clerk, and Sun said it will not comment on the order until it becomes officially public. A spokeswoman for the company cautioned against reading too much into Microsoft’s proclamations, however.

“The order needs to be read in full to be understood,” Sun spokeswoman Lisa Poulson said.

The order follows Microsoft’s request for the court to clarify a preliminary injunction awarded against it in November. In that injunction, Judge Ronald Whyte of U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, ruled that Sun is likely to win its case based on the merits, and ordered Microsoft to make changes to its products in the marketplace that use Java — including Windows 98 and Internet Explorer — so that they are compatible with Sun’s Java products.

As Microsoft takes steps to comply with that order, it asked the court to clarify whether or not it has the right to develop and distribute Java products of its own that don’t use any of Sun’s source code. Today’s ruling allows it to do that. Whyte’s order also said that independently developing Java products won’t put Microsoft in violation of Sun’s Java copyright.

Java is a programming language developed by Sun which is designed to allow developers to write software programs that will run on any computer, regardless of its operating system and hardware.

In its lawsuit filed in October 1997, Sun charged that Microsoft tried to derail the Java movement by introducing products that don’t conform to Sun’s Java specifications. Microsoft did this, according to Sun, because it saw the cross-platform capabilities of Java as a threat to the dominance of its Windows operating system.

Sun said it will post a response to the order later today on the Web (see Resources).