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Thomas Penfield Jackson Federal Judge The judge who will decide the Microsoft case has heard a number of high-profile cases in his 15 years on the Washington bench, including Marion Barry's drug possession trial and a constitutional challenge to the line-item veto. Although Jackson is known as a conservative jurist with a fairly strong background in antitrust law, the Microsoft case is unlike any he's ever heard. Questions about just how tech-savvy Jackson is were eased after the 60-year-old judge announced he'd uninstalled IE3 in under 90 seconds. David Boies Lead Attorney for the Feds The Justice Department was so impressed with Boies' work in successfully defending IBM in its antitrust suit that they decided to bring him on board against Microsoft. With a string of high-profile victories (IBM, CBS's win over Westmoreland, recovering more than $1 billion from Michael Milken and others), Boies has a reputation that will keep Microsoft lawyers nervous throughout the trial. John Warden Microsoft Attorney Trying the case for Microsoft will be a lawyer who has in the past successfully made precedent-setting arguments on bundling. Gates & Co. hope that Warden can convince Jackson that antitrust laws aren't meant to stifle innovation, which is all Microsoft claims it is trying to do. Lawrence Lessig Former Special Master Dismissed as special master in the case earlier in the year after Microsoft objected to what it said was an anti-Redmond stance, Lessig may yet get the last laugh: Judge Jackson has asked him to file a friend-of-the-court brief in the case. William Neukom Microsoft Senior Vice-President for Law and Corporate Affairs The man in charge of leading Microsoft's defense has been providing counsel to Bill Gates for more than half the company's life. A relentless, tireless legal mind, Neukom oversees a staff of 40-plus lawyers to defend Redmond. His position is that, far from trying to create a monopoly stranglehold on the Internet, Microsoft is working to help the computer user by creating seamless, integrated software. Marc Andreessen Netscape Visionary Head of the team that produced Netscape out of the Mosaic project that he worked on while a student at the University of Illinois, Andreessen in the coming months will be in charge of plotting Netscape's technological strategy, regardless of whatever the Justice Department does. So far, everything is working for a 26-year-old guy who's a multimillionaire -- at least on paper. In 1994, he told People magazine, "I've got stock up the wazoo. If it's successful, I'll do well. If not, I'll be working at Safeway." Bill Gates Microsoft CEO We all know of his plans to put a computer on every desktop, and to have them all running Windows. But if things don't work out in the U.S., there's always China -- remember, Jiang Zemin has approved Windows 95 as the OS for the nation's 1.2 billion inhabitants. Jim Barksdale Netscape CEO If Marc Andreessen is the man who made Netscape a product, Jim Barksdale is the man who made Netscape a company. Although his company would very much like to see Microsoft lose, Barksdale is not waiting around for a decision that could take years. Instead, he is trying to position Netscape as a player in the rapidly growing corporate market, where Microsoft is not a dominant player. A charismatic and charming speaker, his testimony has served him well in the struggle to win public opinion over to Netscape's cause. Avadis Tevanian Senior VP of Software Engineering at Apple Tevanian, who came to Apple when it bought NEXT Software, oversees the development of nearly all Apple's software products. Apple's position vis-a-vis Microsoft is a complex one: It makes an operating system and other software products that compete with Microsoft, but Microsoft is also a major investor in Apple, and Apple is dependent on Microsoft for certain key software packages, such as Microsoft Office, that keep the Mac OS alive. But Tevanian didn't mince words on the stand: "Microsoft has leveraged its operating system monopoly to gain increasing and often dominant power in markets for critical application programs, dominance which Microsoft in turn uses to protect and extend its operating system monopoly."
Gary Reback Netscape Attorney A lawyer with the high-powered Silicon Valley firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, Reback filed briefs that influenced Judge Stanley Sporkin to reject as insufficient the 1994 consent decree between the Justice Department and Microsoft. That ruling was eventually overturned, but Reback has remained active in the legal fight against Microsoft -- maybe too active, charge some lawyers, who say that his firm represents too many software firms that have an interest in seeing their large competitor to the north suffer a bit.
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