The Microsoft antitrust case, formally United States v. Microsoft Corp., was a landmark federal lawsuit filed by the United States Department of Justice in 1998 accusing Microsoft of illegally maintaining a monopoly in the personal computer operating system market by bundling its Internet Explorer web browser with Windows and restricting computer manufacturers from removing it or promoting rival browsers. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the finding that Microsoft had violated antitrust law while overturning an order to break the company into two separate businesses. Microsoft settled with the Department of Justice in 2001, agreeing to share its application programming interfaces with third party companies and to submit to outside monitoring of its compliance for five years. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
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Source Wikipedia, United States v. Microsoft Corp.
A landmark antitrust case exemplifying the legal services industry's role adjudicating corporate conduct.
Source Wikipedia, United States v. Microsoft Corp.
Source Wikipedia, United States v. Microsoft Corp.
Source Wikipedia, Microsoft
Companies Involved
Source Wikipedia, United States v. Microsoft Corp.
Sources
1. Wikipedia, United States v. Microsoft Corp.
WikipediaSettlement section
Microsoft agreed to share its application programming interfaces with third-party companies and appoint a panel of three investigators who would have full access to Microsoft's systems, records, and source code for five years.
Lead section
The U.S. government accused Microsoft of illegally monopolizing the web browser market for Windows, primarily through the legal and technical restrictions it put on the abilities of PC manufacturers (OEMs) and users to uninstall Internet Explorer and use other programs such as Netscape and Java.
Associated With: Legal Services Industry, Introduction
United States of America v. Microsoft Corporation, 253 F.3d 34 (D.C. Cir. 2001), was a landmark American antitrust law case.
- Companies Involved: Microsoft
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Frequently Asked Questions
Did the Microsoft antitrust case break up the company?
No. Although a federal district court initially ordered Microsoft split into separate operating systems and applications businesses, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned that breakup order while still finding that Microsoft had violated antitrust law. The case was resolved in 2001 through a settlement in which Microsoft remained a single company but agreed to share technical interfaces with competitors and accept outside monitoring of its conduct.
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