Antitrust case seen going back to the courtroom, sources say

Court-ordered settlement talks between Microsoft and the government are at a standstill, and insiders expect the negotiations to end in failure, sending the case back to the courtroom next year, people close to the talks said Monday. Negther MICROSOFT, the Department of Justice nor the 17 state Attorneys General have substantively changed their positions or moved any closer to forging an agreement that all the parties can agree on, a source said. And neither side sees the other as willing to bend. The source said that while all isn’t hopeless — the sides are meeting as prescribed in the court order and it’s possible that a breakthrough could come at any time — Microsoft and the government are just as far apart as they have always been, making it unlikely that the nearly four-year-old case will be resolved without further court hearings. Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler declined to comment on the progress of the talks, saying only that “The parties are obviously complying with the district court’s order and working in good faith.” U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered late September that the parties enter into “around the clock” settlement talks. If the talks do not succeed by Oct. 12, the judge ordered that they enlist the aid of a mediator. If mediation doesn’t work by Nov. 2, the parties will begin preparing for hearings to determine what punishment to give the software giant for its antitrust violations in order to restore the competitive landscape in the industry.