Microsoft & Justice Agree To Hurry Up

(CBS)  Microsoft and the Justice Department have agreed to speed up their historic antitrust battle in a move that could allow the Supreme Court to decide by September whether to hear the case directly or send it to a federal appeals court.

In a letter to the nation's highest court Thursday, Solicitor General Seth Waxman said Microsoft will file its appeal by July 26, and that government lawyers will file their response by Aug. 15.

Without that schedule, Microsoft would have had until Aug. 14 to file its appeal of a federal judge's order requiring Microsoft to be split into two companies. The government would have had a month to respond.

Microsoft's appeal will urge the justices to send the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The Justice Department wants the Supreme Court to hear the case directly, under a federal law that allows major antitrust disputes to skip the appeals court step and move from a trial court to the Supreme Court.

The law gives the Supreme Court the choice of taking on the case directly or sending it to the appeals court.

Thursday's action means the Supreme Court could announce that choice as early as mid-September—about a month earlier than usual.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson invoked the expediting law Monday when he sent the case to the Supreme Court. In a surprise move, Jackson delayed implementing various conduct restrictions he had imposed in the June 7 decision requiring Microsoft's breakup.

Among those restrictions, Jackson ordered Microsoft to divulge to outside developers technical information about the way its operating systems interact with its software. Those developers would be able to pick apart the computer code without cost to improve their understanding of it and make their own products.

Microsoft also would no longer control what icons are on the Windows operating screen when a user buys a computer. Consumers buying a computer from a distributor such as Dell or Gateway would see a desktop that looked nothing like the Windows desktop they're accustomed to.

Those restrictions no longer loom in the company's immediate future.

CBSNews.com Legal Consultant Andrew Cohen reported Jackson's decision was not a surprise—he hinted that he was leaning in this direction—and Microsoft can at least take solace in the fact that the judge stayed for the time being those action remedies he had imposed on the company.

The Supreme Court must now tell the parties and the rest of us whether it will accept the case. If the High Court makes a decision before the end of its term next week then the case can proceed on appeal without too much delay -- whatever that decision is.

But if the Court doesn't act on Jackson's recommendation before its term ends, the case theoretically could be in limbo for several months.

Cohen predicts the Supreme Court will act quickly, one way or the other, and a decison will be made by next week whether Microsoft's appeal will begin at the Supreme Court or at the lower appeals court.