Lawyers predicting few competition objections

Microsoft's decision to invest $150 million in Apple Computer is unlikely to raise antitrust objections and might even help competition, according to antitrust lawyers. Apple Computer Inc adviser, Mr Steve Jobs, has announced that software giant Microsoft Corp will buy $150 million in Apple stock over the next three years. Under the deal, the two companies will have broad cross-licensing agreements and Apple will bundle Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser into its Macintosh operating system.

By helping to keep a flagging competitor alive, analysts said the investment could deflect criticism that Microsoft has been unfairly dominating the computer industry. "It could easily be this would improve competition within the industry as a whole," said Mr Gordon Spivack, an antitrust lawyer with Coudert Brothers in New York. "Microsoft probably has an interest in helping Apple be one of the competing systems."

Mr Steve Sunshine of law firm Shearman and Sterling in Washington was equally untroubled. "What's all the fuss?" he said. He added that, although some people have raised questions about making Microsoft's Internet Explorer the default browser on the Macintosh, the Mac OS accounted for only a small percentage of overall personal computer sales.

"I don't see how (that) changes much of anything," he said of the decision to bundle the browser with the Mac OS. "The question of whether the platform has any vitality left is an open issue."

US President, Mr Clinton said he was waiting to hear from the Justice Department on whether the plan had antitrust implications.

"We will treat them in the same way as we would anyone else and make the analysis in law that seems appropriate to the Justice Department," Mr Clinton told a news conference. "I have to wait to hear from them about whether there are any antitrust implications to this."

Last Friday, the Justice Department approved Microsoft's proposed $420 million acquisition of Web TV Networks Inc, which offers Internet access using television, after what regulators described as a "thorough investigation" into the deal's potential antitrust impact.