A federal appeals court gave both parties partial victory Thursday in the antitrust case Sun Microsystems Inc. filed against Microsoft Corp.

Microsoft won in that the court struck down Sun's request that Microsoft be forced to ship Java in every copy of Windows it sells. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., vacated a lower court ruling in favor of Sun and remanded that portion back to the U.S. District Court in Baltimore. However, the appellate court ruled in favor of Sun on its copyright claim, and enforced an injunction stating that Microsoft must not distribute any Java other than software licensed to Microsoft as of a 2001 settlement between the companies. "Because the district court was unable to find immediate irreparable harm and because it entered a preliminary injunction that does not aid or protect the court's ability to enter final relief on Sun's PC-operating-systems monopolization claim, we vacate the mandatory preliminary injunction," the court wrote in its ruling. "With respect to the preliminary injunction prohibiting Microsoft from distributing products that infringe Sun's copyright interest, however, we conclude that the district court did not err in construing the scope of the license granted by Sun to Microsoft, nor did it abuse its discretion in entering the injunction," the court wrote. "Accordingly, we affirm that preliminary injunction."