It’s the Death Star versus Ken Starr.
Just as things were starting to look easy, Microsoft lawyers could find themselves eye-to-eye with Bill Clinton’s nemesis, Ken Starr, in the Federal Appeals court.
Starr, famous for his prurient interest in the goings-on between President Bill Clinton and his intern Monica Lewinsky, has signed on to battle Microsoft in the upcoming appeal.
The former Whitewater prosecutor helped ProComp (the Project to Promote Competition and Innovation in the Digital Age), a conservative pro-competition group, file a friend of the court brief yesterday afternoon. It was also filed on behalf of America Online, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, and the Software and Information Industry Association. Judge Robert Bork was a signatory along with Starr.
ProComp’s Executive Director Mike Pettit said he approached Bork last October, who arranged for a meeting. Pettit said Starr had “more antitrust experience than I expected, and he has a strong interest in the technology. He made sure our brief would communicate the legal and technological ideas in terms an outsider could understand.”
He added that now that Starr is “up-to-speed, he will have more of a role going forward.”
“Hiring Starr is a very interesting move,” said Hillard Sterling, a partner at the Gordon & Glickson law firm in Chicago, who once worked with Starr. “He used to be a judge there 10 or 12 years ago, he knows all those judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. They’re the ones who upheld the expansion of the Whitewater investigation into the Monica Lewinsky debacle.”
Microsoft spokesman Jim Cullinan said the timing was ironic, coming a day after the AOL-Time Warner deal went through. “This just shows how much competition there is in the high-tech industry,” he said.
Microsoft got yet another boost yesterday when 38 class-action antitrust suits against the company were dismissed.