A U.S. federal court has denied Microsoft Corp. access to taped interviews with Netscape Communications Corp. executives which Microsoft says contain evidence that will help it fight antitrust charges brought against it by the U.S. government, Microsoft confirmed yesterday.
Federal District Court Judge Richard Stearns yesterday denied a Microsoft motion filed with the court on Oct. 1 asking it to force two professors to turn over taped evidence they gathered in the process of researching a book. The professors argued that the material was collected under a non-disclosure agreement with Netscape.
With its antitrust trial set to commence Oct. 15, the software giant is now scrambling to see if the evidence contained in the tapes can be recovered from other sources, but feels the court should have the benefit of reviewing the evidence first hand, said Microsoft spokesman Adam Sohn.
"Given the amount of time left before this case comes to trial and that these tapes include remarks from employees of one of our major competitors, this is the most appropriate way for the court to receive this information," Sohn said.
The tapes were made by two U.S. professors researching a book about Netscape's software browser war with Microsoft, and include acknowledgments by Netscape officials that the company made a series of technology and business blunders in bringing its Navigator browser software to market.
Microsoft says the tapes show that Netscape's own ineptitude, and not anticompetitive behavior on the part of Microsoft as the antitrust suit it faces alleges, resulted in Netscape's browser losing market share to Microsoft's competing Internet Explorer browser.
"A central piece (of the government's case) is that alleged behavior by Microsoft has caused peril for Netscape, and we intend to show through this and other evidence that it was a string of bad business decisions and bad technology decisions that caused Netscape to lose a bit of share, and not some alleged behavior by Microsoft," Sohn said.
The tapes were recorded during research for a book entitled "Competing on Internet Time: Lessons From
Netscape and its Battle with Microsoft," written by Michael Cusumano, professor at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, and David Yoffie of Harvard Business School.
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