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.

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