Microsoft & the Preliminary Injunction

    Judge Jackson denied the request for a contempt finding, which would mean Microsoft was guilty of a crime, but issued a preliminary injunction which adopted precisely the language that the DOJ had requested in a ruling. This basically meant Microsoft was guilty of no crime, but was issued a court order that forced them to begin distributing Microsoft Windows without Internet Explorer included.

    In an attempt to comply with the preliminary injunction, Microsoft sent a letter to computer manufacturers informing them that they need not license and install Internet Explorer with Windows. They offered them two new licensing options, in which they could either install the most recent version of Windows, then delete all the files that constituted Internet Explorer (creating an operating system that was at best buggy, and perhaps inoperable), or install an earlier release of Windows without the Internet Explorer 1.0 which was shipped with it (creating an obsolete version of Windows roughly equivalent to the original August 95 release of Windows 95).

    At the same time Microsoft filed an appeal of the preliminary injunction, which was heard by the Washington D.C. court of appeals.

Back    |    Next
    Index