U.S.

Microsoft Trial: The Players

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

April 3, 2000 / 6:10 PM EDT / CBS

Here are some of the key players in the Microsoft trial:

Bill Gates
At 44, he is Microsoft's famous chief executive officer and the world's richest person, worth an estimated $85 billion before Monday's verdict. He started using computers at age 13 at Lakeside prep school in Seattle. He co-founded Microsoft in 1975 shortly after he dropped out of Harvard University.

By 1991, the vast majority of world's personal computers relied on Microsoft's operating system software. Hyper-competitive, short-tempered and a hands-on boss sometimes called intolerant of mistakes, Gates also has a quirky personal habit of rocking in his chair while excited or deep in thought.

He chose not to appear as a witness in his company's antitrust trial, though he has testified in other courtroom proceedings. In his deposition, he jousted with government lawyers over almost every question, appeared evasive and forgetful of key events and emails: "I'm not sure what I was thinking in particular when I wrote this mail, but I can, sitting here now, I can give you some reasons that I think I would have had for saying that," he said.

Married in 1994 to a former Microsoft employee, Melinda Gates, the couple has two children. Last year Gates promoted Steve Ballmer, a hard-charging friend from his poker-playing days at Harvard, to president of Microsoft to take off some pressure.

David Boies, government prosecutor
He is 58, an amiable private antitrust lawyer hired by the Justice Department as its lead litigator. He attended Yale Law School and initially agreed to half his $250 hourly rate then agreed to a flat $104,000 a year.

He prefers inexpensive navy blue suits, black sneakers with black shoelaces; he wore the same blue tie nearly every day of the trial. Working without notes, he has a remarkable memory. He came into the case without a great grasp of computer technology and stumbled badly when the judge asked him how digital video "streams" across the Internet but later he competently questioned witnesses about technically arcane subjects like Java programming language and dynamic link libraries in software design.

He represented IBM in its 13-year antitrust case against the Justice Department and once cross-examined a Justice economist for 38 days. He is currently a partner in Boies & Schiller in Armonk, N.Y., and most recently represented comedian Garry Shandling in a $100 million lawsuit against his former manager, in which the sides settled.

John Warden, defense lawyer
He is the top antitrust specialist at the Washington law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. Newsweek said "Warden's folksy charm and writing skills have gotten big companies out of binds before." His major coup was reversing an $87 million verdict against Eastman Kodak in the late '70s when the photo company was accused of illegally tying its film to Instamatic cameras.

Thomas Penfield Jackson, U.S. District Judge
e is 62, a former Navy officer and a Republican appointed in 1982 by President Reagan. He has been a fixture in the case against Microsoft since 1995, when he approved the settlement in the first government lawsuit against the company. An important ruling he made against Microsoft in December 1997 was overturned by an appeals court, which said he had overstepped his authority. Click here for more on the enigmatic Microsoft judge.

Richard Posner, mediator
A widely respected chief judge for the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, during the trial he was appointed by Judge Jackson as mediator to oversee "voluntary" settlement talks between the government and the Microsoft.