Microsoft has made a small advance in its long-running case
against Sun Microsystems. Late yesterday, US District Judge Ronald
Whyte accepted Microsoft’s request for summary judgement,
dismissing Sun’s claims of copyright infringement. However, the
judgement is not an indication that Microsoft will necessarily go
on to win the entire case. Sun issued a statement dismissing the
decision as trivial.
Java, the platform independent language invented by Sun, is
still the subject of a court order banning Microsoft from using
Java in its products. The reason given at the time, back in
November 1998, was that Microsoft violated Sun’s copyright for
Java. An appeals court then overturned that court order. Judge
Whyte reinstated the injunction in January of this year.
In 1995, Microsoft obtained a licence from Sun for the use of
Java in products. However, it has since built its own Virtual
Machine, a runtime environment for use in Microsoft Windows
operating systems and its Internet Explorer browser. Microsoft also
produces a Java development tool, Visual J++.
Sun argues that Microsoft’s Virtual Machine is incompatible with
Sun’s core version of Java, but also that it causes developers to
build Java programs that only operate on Microsoft’s Windows,
contrary to Sun’s intentions that Java should be a “write once, run
anywhere” language, and in violation of the licensing agreement
between Microsoft and Sun for the use of Java.
