A group of state attorneys general urged a federal judge on Tuesday to hold Microsoft Corp. to a 2002 antitrust settlement another five years so that the company can't stymie embryonic Web 2.0 rivals of its Windows operating system.

does California law allow a court to look at parol evidence in a contract dispute? That's a big part of what the parties argued about in appeals court in SCO v. Novell.

A group of states led by California said in a court filing Thursday that ending oversight of Microsoft's business practices in November would not allow enough time to consider the antitrust implications of Windows Vista

A number of states including California and New York filed legal briefs Friday supporting their earlier request to extend the government's restrictive antitrust oversight of Microsoft Corp. The states said in a court filing that extended oversight of the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant is necessary for "meaningful marketplace competition."

Novell moves for judgment on slander of title and damages:

Defendant Novell, Inc. ("Novell") respectfully moves the Court to grant judgment as a matter of law in favor of Novell because plaintiff The SCO Group, Inc. ("SCO") has failed to introduce legally sufficient evidence upon which a reasonable jury could find for SCO on its claim for slander of title....

Artifex Software Inc. today announced that it has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against Palm, Inc., based on Palm's unauthorized copying and distribution of one of Artifex's registered technologies

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued a ruling this evening extending the expiring terms of Microsoft's U.S. antitrust consent decree until Nov. 12, 2009, two years from the previous expiration date. California, New York and other states had been asking for a five-year extension; Microsoft had argued that none was needed.

I thought you might like to see the court's order regarding Microsoft, extending the US District Court for the District of Columbia's oversight. There are actually two documents, one released for the public, a kind of executive summary [PDF], and then a much longer (78 pages compared to 6) Memorandum and Order, which is available from the US District Court for the District of Columbia's website's daily list of orders. I have them both as text.

In the next seven days, both Microsoft's European Union and United States antitrust cases will reach critical junctures. A routine U.S. hearing tomorrow will likely be anything but routine. Elsewhere, an appeals court will issue a ruling on the validity of Microsoft's adverse antitrust case in Europe.