With neither side giving ground, Microsoft Corp. and government antitrust prosecutors took widely diverging positions yesterday over what a federal judge should do to cure the big software company's illegal monopoly. Microsoft asked the judge to decide, as a first step, the ''outer bounds'' of a remedy she would impose for the antitrust violations, and then let the opposing sides go to battle about the specifics. That schedule would keep the case going well into next year, and maybe beyond. ''The more extensive and onerous the relief at issue, the more extensive the procedures that will be necessary to ensure Microsoft's right to be heard on that relief,'' company lawyers said. The Justice Department, 18 states, and the District of Columbia, meanwhile, urged the judge to lay out a fairly brief schedule, taking only six months or so.
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