Microsoft Corp

Microsoft Corp. said it would defer about $1.5 billion in revenue from its current fiscal second quarter to its third quarter to account for its upgrade plan and pre-shipments of its upcoming Windows Vista operating system and Office 2007 software suite. The company said it would begin a coupon program for personal computer buyers to upgrade to Vista when it premieres next year in an effort to avoid a drop-off in PC sales over the holidays and ahead of the software's release.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider whether Microsoft Corp. should have to pay damages overseas for infringing a speech recognition software patent owned by AT&T Inc. The high court granted Microsoft's petition to review an appeals court ruling that held that AT&T could seek royalties based on the foreign manufacture and sale of infringing software products.

A former Microsoft Corp. employee pleaded guilty to selling the world's largest software maker's products for more than $7 million for personal profit, federal prosecutors said. Finn Contini, 36, admitted to ordering software through Microsoft's internal systems under the pretense it was for internal use and using the money to buy real estate, cars and jewelry, the U.S. attorney's office said.

Microsoft Corp. adopted a new mantra, promising to work harder to make its software work better with other software systems and hardware, Chairman Bill Gates said in an e-mail to customers. Previously, such e-mails signaled the launch of new initiatives; the last major one was to improve the security of the company's software.

Microsoft Corp. filed 117 federal lawsuits against unnamed defendants, accusing them of a high-tech form of identity theft known as "phishing." The lawsuits, filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, accuse the "John Doe" defendants of using mass e-mail or pop-up ads to trick consumers into revealing personal information such as bank account information and Social Security numbers.

Five leading technology companies are supporting European Union regulators in their antitrust battle with Microsoft Corp., a lawyer for the group said Wednesday. IBM Corp., Oracle Corp., Red Hat Inc., RealNetworks Inc. and Nokia have applied to intervene against Microsoft in its court appeal of an EU ruling made last year, lawyer Thomas Vinje said. Vinje said the companies' stance countered Microsoft claims that the European Commission's case was without industry support.

A federal judge Wednesday temporarily blocked Microsoft Corp. from using a networking feature in future versions of its Windows operating system. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco forbade Microsoft from selling or marketing its Chimney design while a lawsuit over a patent owned by Alacritech Inc. was pending, closely held Alacritech said in a statement.

Microsoft Corp. must make it easier for developers of free programs to work with Windows by June 1 or face new European antitrust charges, people familiar with the matter said Friday. The European Commission is threatening Microsoft with fines because it says the company's response to a March 2004 order doesn't go far enough, said the sources, who declined to be identified.

The European Union said its antitrust regulators might need several weeks to decide whether to slap Microsoft Corp. with huge fines once a midnight deadline for the software maker to comply with a landmark ruling expires tonight. "This is highly complicated stuff, and therefore we will see what they come up with and analyze it carefully," said EU Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd. "Once the deadline has expired, it will take several weeks to analyze what's on the table."

A federal judge threw out four of Novell Inc.'s six antitrust claims against Microsoft Corp. but ruled that the case could proceed. Novell alleges that Microsoft used its monopoly power to limit sales of Novell's office productivity applications, including WordPerfect, a word processing program, and Quattro Pro, a spreadsheet program. U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz cited a 1997 e-mail from Jeff Raikes, head of Microsoft's Office software unit, to billionaire investor Warren E.