Microsoft Antitrust extended to 2011

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has extended her oversight of Microsoft's antitrust settlement by another 18 months, setting the new expiration date for May 12, 2011. Kollar-Kotelly acknowledged during a hearing today that this would be the second extension in under two years, but said that the company is "in a different and much better place" than before.

The judge's order comes only days after the US Department of Justice filed a request for the oversight to be extended. The DOJ apparently felt that Microsoft still had a ways to go before meeting the requirements originally set in 2002, and that 18 months would be plenty of time to finish up without having to grant further extensions. At the same time, a joint status report from Microsoft and the plaintiffs states that all parties felt that the required documentation is almost ready. "While the entire project has taken longer than any of the parties anticipated, the project is nearly complete," read the report.

The sanctions on Microsoft were originally set to expire in November 2007 and are aimed at preventing the company from retaliating against hardware vendors that ship computers with alternatives to Microsoft's software products. When it came time for the decree to be lifted, however, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly decided that Microsoft failed to provide protocol specification documents to competitors as required by the agreement. Because of this, she extended the oversight until November of 2009. (An additional set of sanctions mandating interoperability API licensing had already been extended for another two years.)

As part of the new extension, Microsoft and the states involved in the settlement will hold a status meeting on August 5, 2009, with a joint status report due to Kollar-Kotelly on or before July 31.