Tech Shout!

The U.S. government has decided to continue keeping an eye over Microsoft’s acquiescence with the terms of its popular antitrust case settlement for atleast the next two years.

Till November 12, 2009, the court will supervise over Microsoft’s compliance with a U.S. antitrust settlement. Federal district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly passed the 78-page ruling on Tuesday. 10 states, including California and New York issued a filing pushing the court to extend the verdict to 2012, arguing that Microsoft still unfairly dominates the PC software market.

Kollar-Kotelly attributed her decision to a very large extent to Microsoft’s delays in making technical documents available to software licensees as required by the court, particularly those related to communications protocols.

Such information eases the task for other manufacturers when they develop products that are compatible with Microsoft’s OS’.

The court ruling passed in 2002, which settled the milestone U.S. antitrust case against Microsoft, includes the software giant’s association with computer makers, the manner in which the company’s software works with other types of software and enforcement to make certain that Microsoft does not do an encore of its past practices.

Kollar-Kotelly wrote, “The Court’s extension should not be viewed as a sanction against Microsoft; to the contrary, the Court commends Microsoft for its willingness to cooperate with the Plaintiffs in this action and in United States v. Microsoft in negotiating solutions to issues as they have arisen throughout the past five years.”

Kollar-Kotelly also made known the probability that the judgment could be extended in the future. Adding that there are mechanisms in place to reconsider the verdict in the fall of 2009.

The present ruling has been passed with an intention to give Microsoft time to finish that task.