AOL Time Warner files antitrust suit against Microsoft

WASHINGTON -- AOL Time Warner sued Microsoft in federal court Tuesday seeking damages for harm done to AOL's Netscape Internet browser, which had ruled computer desktops until Microsoft began giving its competing browser away.

Many of Microsoft's business practices were found to be anticompetitive by a federal appeals court last year. AOL, which bought Netscape in 1999, wants Microsoft to cease its contested business practices and pay damages.

AOL executive John Buckley noted that court ruling and said, "This action is an attempt to get justice in this matter."

Microsoft spokesman Vivek Varma said AOL is trying to compete with Microsoft in the courts rather than the marketplace.

"We don't think this lawsuit has anything to do with consumers," Varma said. "AOL has been using the political and legal system to compete against Microsoft for several years. This is just the next legal tactic in their business plans."

AOL filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Under federal law, AOL would be entitled to triple any actual damages found by the court.

One possible option, if a judge ruled in favor of AOL, would be to force Microsoft to sell a stripped-down version of its Windows operating system so computer manufacturers could choose which Internet browser to offer. That has also been requested by nine state attorneys general suing Microsoft in federal court.

An Internet browser is a program that allows a computer to access the World Wide Web. Netscape's founders pioneered the browser software, and it was once considered a software platform that could be used to threaten Microsoft's desktop hegemony.

The federal government and nine other states settled their landmark antitrust suit with Microsoft last year, and that settlement is under consideration by a federal judge. AOL has been a longtime critic of Microsoft and has talked frequently with prosecutors throughout the case.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who heard the federal government's case against Microsoft in the Netscape matter, found that Microsoft tried to keep consumers from being able to choose Netscape. The appeals court affirmed many of Jackson's decisions.

Microsoft's business practices "help keep usage of Navigator below the critical level necessary for Navigator or any other rival to pose a real threat to Microsoft's monopoly," the appeals court wrote last year.