Microsoft Corporation urged the Court of Appeals on Thursday to overturn a lower court's ruling that it must not force OEMs to accept the bundling of Windows 95 and Internet Explorer. The company also accused the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) of unfairly targeting the company.
"The DOJ's ultimate objective is apparently to turn Microsoft into a regulated company in an otherwise unregulated industry, without any Congressional mandate authorizing such an intrusion into the free market," Microsoft's wrote in a document submitted to the court. Microsoft says the government's case is "the government's case is "based on the logical fallacy that a 'separate product' \[IE\] cannot also be an element of an 'integrated product' \[IE and Windows\]."
Microsoft contends that the DOJ is misinterpreting the 1995 consent decree that Microsoft signed and does not even understand what Internet Explorer is. It also believes that Judge Jackson overstepped his authority when he found no evidence that Microsoft was violating its consent decree but handed the company a temporary injunction anyway.
A panel of three appellate judges will hear the case on April 21st
