Judge Allows Delay in Microsoft Trial

The antitrust trial against Microsoft will begin next month, two weeks later than planned, a federal judge said. U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson agreed to a joint request by Microsoft and the Justice Department to delay the trial until Sept. 23, in part because of the legal fight to let reporters and the public watch the pretrial interviews with Microsoft’s billionaire chairman, Bill Gates, and other executives. A federal appeals court has effectively closed the interviews to the public. Jackson reluctantly agreed last week to open the interviews. A three-judge panel of the appeals court then ordered the interviews to resume in private while delaying any decision in the case until after Sept. 29. That is long after the last of any pretrial depositions and effectively bars the public from watching. In Thursday’s court hearing, Lee Levine, the media attorney representing several news organizations, said he will ask the appeals court to make its decision in time for the public to attend at least some depositions. Another attorney in Levine’s firm, Jay Brown, said lawyers decided not to take their case to the full appeals court or to the U.S. Supreme Court because “the chance of success is not rosy.” It was unclear after the hearing when the government might interview Gates.