The Microsoft Antitrust Cases ─ Competition Policy for the Twenty-first Century

For more than two decades, the U.S. Department of Justice, various states, theEuropean Commission, and many private litigants pursued antitrust actions against the tech giantMicrosoft. In investigating and prosecuting Microsoft, federal and state prosecutors were playingtheir traditional role of reining in a corporate power intent on eliminating competition. Seen fromanother perspective, however, the government's prosecution of Microsoft -- in which it deployed thecentury-old Sherman Antitrust Act in the volatile and evolving global business environment of thedigital era -- was unprecedented. In this book, two experts on competition policy offer acomprehensive account of the multiple antitrust actions against Microsoft--from beginning to end --and an assessment of the effectiveness of antitrust law in the twenty-first century. Gavil and Firstdescribe in detail the cases that the Department of Justice and the states initiated in 1998,accusing Microsoft of obstructing browser competition and perpetuating its Windows monopoly. Theycover the private litigation that followed, and the European Commission cases decided in 2004 and2009. They also consider broader issues of competition policy in the age of globalization,addressing the adequacy of today's antitrust laws, their enforcement by multiple parties around theworld, and the difficulty of obtaining effective remedies -- all lessons learned from theMicrosoft cases.

Andrew I. Gavil is currently Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, on leave from Howard University Law School, where he is Professor of Law. Harry First is Charles L. Denison Professor of Law at New York University School of Law and Director of its Competition, Innovation, and Information Law Program.