Microsoft Corp has lost its bid to access the research on rival Netscape Communications Corp carried out by two university professors who wrote a book about the company. A federal judge in Boston ruled that the release of the information to Microsoft would violate confidentiality agreements between the two professors and the company. Microsoft was seeking the detailed interviews in the hopes of using them in the upcoming anti-trust trial to show that Netscape’s decline in the market for browser software was due to poor management decisions and not Microsoft’s alleged predatory behavior. The judge did leave open the possibility, however, that Microsoft could petition for access to some of the material as the case unfolds, if it can prove that the information contained in the soon-to-be-released book can’t be obtained by any other means.
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