Sun Files Landmark Suit Against Microsoft

In particular, the company wants the court to mandate that Microsoft distribute Sun's current binary implementation of the Java plug-in as part of Windows XP and Internet Explorer, and stop distribution of Microsoft's Java Virtual Machine through separate downloads.

Sun filed the suit Friday in a U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif. In the suit, the Mountain View, Calif.-based technology company asks for remedies for what it says is harm inflicted by Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior with respect to the Java platform and for damages resulting from Microsoft's attempts "to maintain and expand its monopoly power."

In particular, it claims Microsoft has damaged Sun in a number of ways, including: fragmenting the Java platform, flooding the market with incompatible Java Runtime Environments, forcing others to distribute products that are incompatible with Java, limiting Sun's distribution channels for the Java Runtime Environment, interfering with the development of Java-based applications for compatible runtimes, and copyright infringement, among other things.

Sun announced the suit Friday in a conference call with press and analysts. Several analysts questioned the company about the wisdom and timing of the suit. One bluntly asked "What's the point?" given that lawsuits can take years to wind their way through the courts, cost plaintiffs enormous sums of time and money and rarely result in the granting of a preliminary injunction.

Sun countered that Microsoft's actions are particularly egregious and said Microsoft was guilty several serious acts that damaged Sun's business, according to Michael Morris, senior vice president and general counsel at Sun. In particular, Morris says Sun believes it can demonstrate that Sun has illegally monopolized the Web browser market and the office productivity suite market, and that it has attempted to illegally monopolize the workgroup server operating systems market, and engaged in illegal tying with regards to Internet Explorer, Windows Workgroup Server, IIS and the .Net framework. Furthermore, Sun alleges Microsoft has entered into illegal, exclusive and exclusionary agreements with third parties and engaged in copyright infringement.

"The problem arises from the fact that they engaged in a series of clearly anticompetitive, monopolistic acts with respect to the Java platform to injure that platform on the desktop in order to delay its adoption on the desktop, and give them time to come up with an alternative, which is the .Net framework," says Morris. "This didn't happen accidentally; it was part of their plan. And, for that reason, we think they are libel to us and we think we have a pretty good shot at getting the judge to grant the preliminary relief that we have asked for."

Obviously, Sun feels bolstered by the fact that certain findings it believes are critical to its case have already been established by other courts. In particular, Sun points out in a statement that in recent antitrust proceedings brought by the United States, 19 individual states and the District of Columbia "Microsoft was held to have illegally maintained its monopoly over the market for Intel-compatible personal computer ('PC') operating systems by engaging in anticompetitive acts that impeded the distribution and/or use of alternative platforms that threatened Microsoft's monopoly, including Sun's Java platform."