Microsoft's appeal to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals argues that the ruling was flawed because the rival, Sun Microsystems, did not prove immediate and irreparable harm, a standard required for preliminary injunctions.
Sun has filed a $1 billion antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft and successfully won an injunction requiring Microsoft to include the latest version of Sun's Java in Windows XP and related systems.
Sun argued that waiting until the antitrust case is decided could permanently kill Java, a technology designed to let programmers write software to run on all types of computers, whether they use Windows, Apple's Mac OS or another operating system.
The preliminary injunction was granted in December and finalized Jan. 21 by a federal judge in Baltimore, though the appeals court on Feb. 3 temporarily put the order on hold in anticipation of Wednesday's filing.
Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler said the order was unprecedented and "unnecessarily intervenes in the free operation of the marketplace and does not serve the public interest."
Officials at Sun Microsystems of Santa Clara, Calif., were reviewing the filing and planned a response March 7, spokeswoman Lisa Poulson said. Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., would then have until March 18 to counter the response.
Sun Microsystems has said its Java programming language is damaged each day the injunction is not imposed because the market tilts toward Microsoft's .NET framework.
Sun accuses Microsoft of unlawfully distributing outdated Java versions that are incompatible for Windows users in an effort to maintain a monopoly.
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