October 7, 1997 — Sun Microsystems filed a lawsuit today in U.S. District court against Microsoft for a breach of contract over delivering a compatible version of Java with it products. Sun is seeking an injunction to keep Microsoft from using the “Java Compatible” brand; it also seeks to stop Microsoft from misleading developers using Microsoft’s Software Development Kit for Java (SDKJ) who may believe that applications they develop with the SDKJ will be fully Java compatible Java.
“Sun’s first responsibility is to preserve the significant investments that Sun and hundreds of companies have made. We are required to take this action on behalf of our licensees, the Java industry, and Sun’s shareholders,” said Alan Baratz, president of Sun’s JavaSoft division, during a teleconference today. “Our goal is to get Microsoft back into compliance, ” Baratz added.
Baratz said that for the past six months, Sun had attempted to work out a way that Microsoft could stand by its contractual obligations. “Rather than comply with its contractual obligations,” Baratz noted, “Microsoft has instead embarked on a deliberate course of conduct in an attempt to fragment the standardized application programming environment established by the Java technology, to break the cross-platform compatibility of the Java programming environment, and to implement the Java technology in a manner calculated to cause software developers to create programs that will operate only on platforms that use defendant Microsoft’s Win32-based operating systems and no other systems platform or browser.”
A second complaint involved the clandestine replacement and modification of the Java APIs, so when developers use the SDKJ to write what they think are standard Java applications and applets, they are actually writing Windows-optimized or -specific programs.
In the complaint, Sun is seeking preliminary and permanent injunction to keep Microsoft from
using the Java Compatible logo
directly (or indirectly) making statements or performing acts that are likely to cause confusion, mistakes, or deception as to the compatibility of IE 4.0 and SDKJ 1.1 with Sun’s Java technology
- directly or indirectly performing any acts that are likely to diminish the value of the Java Compatible logo
In an unrelated action, the Wall Street Journal reports that attorneys general from California, New York, and Connecticut have joined attorneys general from Massachusetts and Texas in a “pre-emptive” antitrust probe into Microsoft practices, specifically focused on Microsoft’s plans to tightly integrate Internet Explorer in Windows 98. Windows 98 is due out in the second quarter of ’98.
According to Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, his office is looking into whether Microsoft is pressuring PC makers that ship machines with the Windows operating systems to only include Internet Explorer as the browser option.
Also, investigators are trying to determine if Microsoft is requiring (by contract) its suppliers and partners to alert Microsoft if they receive requests for information from state or federal sources. “We’ve received reports about such a provision,” said Attorney General Blumenthal.
Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger’s Consumer Protection and Antitrust Bureau have contacted Dell Computer, Compaq, Gateway 2000, and American Airlines Sabre Group, to acquire copies of the OEM contracts between the respective companies and Microsoft.
