In a court filing Tuesday, Microsoft Corporation said that CEO Bill Gates was "too busy" to attend two days of questioning by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), while reminding the court that numerous Microsoft executives have already voluntarily submitted themselves for questioning.
"There is no point in wasting Mr. Gates' time with questions that have already been answered by persons more directly involved in the development of Windows 98 and the promotion and distribution of Internet Explorer technologies," the court filing reads. Microsoft also
The company also argued that it shouldn't have to turn over any of the code for Windows 98, as the government is requesting.
"Microsoft must insist on such a source code license agreement as a matter of basic copyright and trade secret law, in order to protect its valuable intellectual property. The source code for Microsoft's operating system software products contains numerous comments that disclose not only the methodology employed by Microsoft in developing those products, but also features and functions that may be included in subsequent releases. The source code to Windows 98 is among Microsoft's most valuable and closely guarded assets. That source code, for a currently shipping product responsible for generating billions of dollars of revenue for Microsoft, should not be treated cavalierly."
If you're interested in reading the entire transcript, it is available online at the Microsoft PressPass Web site
