Microsoft Corp. on Monday appealed a federal court ruling that prevents it from forcing computer makers to install its Internet browser program as a condition of buying the widely used Windows operating system software. Microsoft said it would argue that U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson’s ruling went beyond what he was asked to decide. “The matter before the court was whether Microsoft could be held in contempt for violating a consent decree entered in 1995,” said William H. Neukom, Microsoft’s senior vice president for law and corporate affairs. When Jackson denied a Justice Department request to hold Microsoft in contempt, “the case should have ended there. But on its own initiative . . . (the court) issued a preliminary injunction.”
