Microsoft's first formal response to antitrust charges brought against it by the US Justice Department and 20 states has drawn sharp responses from competitors and representatives of the states.
Late on Tuesday, Microsoft filed its answer to the lawsuits, denying all charges. The government's sweeping antitrust cases against it was "completely groundless", the software company said. Microsoft also issued a counterclaim against the 20 states involved in the legal action.
Addressing one of the central issues of the case, Microsoft denied it had incorporated its Internet browser software, Internet Explorer, in Windows 95 in an attempt to limit competition for Netscape. This integration had been planned in late 1993, "before Netscape even was founded [in 1994]," Microsoft claimed.
However, Netscape said on Wednesday Microsoft was rewriting history: not until early 1995 did it actually begin offering a browser and before that it made little public mention of Internet software.
Microsoft also denied using exclusionary contracts to limit competition and denied that it had attempted to "illegally divide" the browser market with Netscape. Taking an aggressive stand in its counterclaim against the states, it alleged that their lawsuit "unconstitutionally undermine[d] the company's intellectual property rights under federal law".
