Another person misreading the Appeals Court ruling is Dave Winer, but Winer has to go on and make one of his typically loopy suggestions,
Now it seems the next step is for a new trial, and although I’m not a lawyer it seems only reasonable, given the number of violations of antitrust law that Microsoft has been found guilty of, that some protections be put in place immediately to stop Microsoft from doing more harm while the new trial is proceeding.
Let me get this straight. The government needs to conduct a legal proceeding to come up with a more realistic penalty for Microsft, but it should go ahead and institute a penalty before it actually gets around to instituting a penalty.
Besides which, there isn’t going to be another trial. One thing I forgot to add before is that a settlement is also in the Justice Department’s interest. Given the unanimous verdict by the appellate court, any judge named to oversee a new penalty phase is going to be looking over his or her shoulder. There is always the possibility that Microsoft could wind up with a lighter penalty than it might be willing to agree to in a settlement.