Justice and 19 states defend Microsoft breakup proposal in legal brief.

In a filing made Wednesday evening with a federal court in Washington, the Justice Department and 19 states strongly defended their proposal to break up Microsoft Corp. to prevent the software giant from violating antitrust laws. The 70-page filing is the government's last effort to influence U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson before the judge holds a court hearing in the Microsoft antitrust case on May 24. The government is trying to convince Judge Jackson to split Microsoft into two separate companies, rather than adopting a much milder series of restrictions on business practices that Microsoft proposed to the court last week. "What remedy does Microsoft propose to undo the damage to competition caused by its past illegal conduct? Nothing," the government said in its brief filed in U.S. District Court.The government's brief argues that Microsoft failed to address the antitrust violations that Judge Jackson found in his "conclusions of law" issued on April 3. "Instead, it offered a cosmetic remedy that would have virtually no competitive significance," the government's filing said. "It would neither undo the harm that Microsoft inflicted on competition nor prevent Microsoft from illegally using its monopoly power to inflict similar harm in the future." Specifically, the software giant's proposed remedy would leave it free to tie together two separate products that have no technological integration, make predatory expenditures designed to eliminate competition, and retaliate against PC makers that distribute non-Microsoft products or refuse to distribute Microsoft ones, the government said. While Microsoft wants until Dec. 4 to prepare an argument against splitting the company in two, the government's filing said that the company's request is "a transparent effort to delay the determination and implementation of a remedy for its illegal acts as long as possible." "It's unfortunate but not surprising that the government has filed a document filled with rhetoric in its attempt to defend a very extreme remedy proposal," said Microsoft spokesman Jim Cullinan.