If the government and Microsoft can't hammer out a settlement soon, a new U.S. District Court judge will be assigned to the antitrust case next month and charged with proposing remedies. The operative word is "if." To hear Bill Gates tell it, Microsoft is eager to settle. Immediately after the split decision on the case June 28, Gates said the company will work to resolve the case "without continued need for litigation."
Settlement talks failed before, but the times have changed now that a federal appeals court rejected the trial court's breakup order. "I think that a settlement is possible, so long as the breakup option is not on the table," said Richard A. Epstein, interim dean at the University of Chicago Law School. "Right now [a breakup order] looks like a long shot for the government, so that the range of options is circumscribed. If I were Microsoft, I would yield on some of the complaints about the foreclosure of competition by exclusive dealing practices, and allow for their invalidation."
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