DOJ Rejects Microsoft's Objection To Lessig

By AMY ROGERS

With a week to go before Department of Justice and Microsoft Corp . attorneys head back to court, Microsoft yesterday said that one of the key people tapped to decide the case is biased against the Redmond, Wash.-based company.

Justice quickly quashed the objection, saying that Microsoft did not sufficiently back up its claims.

Microsoft faxed a letter yesterday to Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig, the "special master" assigned by U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson to help decide the case, which pivots on whether Microsoft's wrapping its Internet Explorer [IE] Web browser in Windows operating systems is anti-competitive.

In the letter, Microsoft claimed that Eric Bradley, a member of Netscape's technical support staff, sent email to Lessig discussing the process of installing IE.

"I believe the only way we were able to eventually [use Netscape software to access files] was to completely delete Windows 95 and reinstall it from scratch," Bradley wrote in the email, which is posted on Microsoft's Web site [www.microsoft.com]. "This is the kind of blatant anti-competition strategy that only Microsoft can get away with.

"I really do hate [Microsoft]," Bradley wrote at the end of the email.

"OK, now this is making me really angry, and Charlie Nesson thinks we should file a law suit," responded Lessig. Nesson is a colleague of Lessig's at Harvard.

In the letter to Lessig, Microsoft asked that Lessig disqualify himself immediately.

"In light of the evidence that has now come to light demonstrating your actual bias against Microsoft, it is difficult to see how you can in good conscience preside over further proceedings in this matter," wrote Microsoft attorney Richard Urowsky.

The Department of Justice rejected Microsoft's claims in a court filing, saying that "none of the complai nts about Professor Lessig raised in Microsoft's motion, including Microsoft's selective and misleading references to his writings, reasonably suggests any personal bias."

Last month, Jackson asked Lessig to evaluate the situation, and to file a report by May

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