Microsoft Turns The Screw On Tevanian Testimony

Computergram International, Nov 5, 1998

By Dan Jones Microsoft Corp raised the temperature yesterday in the antitrust trial, by trying to demolish the testimony of Apple Computer Corp's Avadis Tevanian Jr and by questioning his validity as a witness for the government side. The senior vice president's written testimony contains probably the widest reaching and most serious set of allegations against Microsoft yet seen in this case.

Outside the courthouse, Microsoft spokesperson, Mark Murray said of Tevanian's claims: "loose and groundless accusations may look good on paper but they don't stand up in court." In the courtroom, Microsoft counsel Theodore Edelman set out to question the document's accuracy and the integrity of its author. Tevanian was taken to task over his allegations that Redmond tried to "sabotage" Apple's QuickTime technology. Edelman also questioned Apple's assertions that Microsoft created "misleading error messages" to deprive QuickTime of the opportunity of processing certain multimedia file types, and that Apple had only limited success in reverse-engineering a solution to the messages and other "technical bypasses." Tevanian said that he had then emailed Bill Gates about the problems. He said that a 'patch' to allow QuickTime to access the .mov file format in Windows had been issued, but said that the other problems had not been fixed. Edelman then queried whether Apple had really pushed Redmond for fixes to their QuickTime problems - drawing on the deposition of Tim Schaff of Apple, who said that Apple had made only limited efforts to obtain patches for the bugs. Tevanian acquiesced, and said: "turning back the clock, should we have been more aggressive? Yes." He added that Apple didn't believe that it would get answers from Microsoft on the QuickTime issues. Edelman then produced an email dated June 15 1998 from Microsoft's Cristiano Pierry which included a pre- release copy of the Windows Media Player (WMP). A further email from Pierry on June 19 asked if the WMP/QuickTime issues had been resolved. Edelman asked why these emails had not been mentioned in the testimony, and why Apple had not responded to Pierry for more than a month. Tevanian, in one of the more heated exchanges of the day, replied that with the .mov fix, Apple had been led to believe the other problems had been fixed. He added that Apple "took the time in order to get good data" to respond to Microsoft. He also asserted that he felt the onus was on Microsoft to fix problems with their software. Edelman asked if Tevanian really thought that the bugs had been "cooked up" by Re dmond. Tevanian responded curtly with this question, "if they could fix .mov, why couldn't they fix the others?" Edelman again asked if the bugs were deliberately inserted into the Windows OS and Internet Explorer 4.0 by Microsoft. Tevanian allowed, "I don't know for sure if they were intentional or not." Edelman then stated that as Tevanian had not attended internal Microsoft meetings, he could have "no basis to assert" that the error messages were intentionally put there to harm QuickTime. Tevanian asked, "what other goal could there have been?" But went on to say that he could not "verify one way or the other" if the error messages were deliberate. Edelman went on to question Tevanian's suitability as witness. In a quickfire round of questioning he queried Tevanian use of the word 'monopoly', declaring that the witness could not define his terms on a legal, economic or anti- trust basis. Tevanian, a software engineer by trade, could do little but agree. However, David Boies, in a Q&A session outside the court, denied that this discredited Tevanian. He also stated that the DoJ would be introducing "internal Microsoft documents" to back up its allegations of deliberate malice on Microsoft's part.