Microsoft appeals Java ruling

Microsoft asked a federal appeals court on Wednesday to shelve a lower court order that would force it to start incorporating Sun Microsystems' Java programming language in its Windows operating system. The world's largest software company filed an emergency motion with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., seeking a stay of the Java must-carry order until the court considers its challenge of the order.

In the motion, Microsoft's lawyers asked for an expedited hearing of the lower-court ruling, which they called extreme and unprecedented. "The injunction will inflict serious harm on Microsoft and Windows, Microsoft's flagship product, that is distributed to many millions of customers throughout the world," Microsoft told the appeals court.

Microsoft is hoping to overturn an order issued Tuesday by U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz in Baltimore that requires Microsoft to begin putting Sun's Java into Windows within 120 days after the order is entered. Motz said in an opinion issued Dec. 23, 2002, that the Java must-carry order was needed to remedy Microsoft's past antitrust violations and level the playing field between Java and Microsoft's .Net Web services software. Motz said there was a "substantial" likelihood that after a full trial he would impose the order permanently, calling it "an elegantly simple remedy" aimed at preventing Microsoft's past wrongs from giving it an advantage in the market battle for Internet-based computing. The Java must-carry idea was rejected by another federal judge in the separate government antitrust case against Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft.

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