Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) filed the motion requesting a delay with the Salt Lake City, Utah, federal court on Sept. 15. Microsoft says it is seeking to push back the expected June 1999 trial date in order to be able to make available the full complement of witnesses that Caldera is requesting to depose.

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"Caldera has 39 witnesses they will call and 33 others they may call," says Microsoft spokesman Jim Cullinan. "Microsoft hasn't been able to get all of the additional witnesses. Twenty-eight haven't been deposed yet and 21 haven't even been slated."

Caldera officials, however, say they "would be ready to start the trial tomorrow," in the words of company spokesman Lyle Ball.

Caldera first sued Microsoft for alleged anticompetitive behavior in 1996, claiming that Microsoft had unfairly monopolized the DOS market. The case was expanded to include the alleged tying of DOS and Windows 95 in February of this year. In July, a Salt Lake City federal court judge compelled Microsoft to turn over Windows source code to Caldera as part of the ongoing information-gathering process in the suit.

Some of the issues raised in the Caldera vs. Microsoft case are expected to be used by the Department of Justice as evidence of Microsoft's alleged pattern of violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The inclusion of rogue error messages warning Windows 3.1 customers against using DR-DOS is one such piece of evidence "that has always been available to the government," notes Ball.

Caldera "hasn't been approached or asked by the government to provide any additional information" for the DOJ vs. Microsoft antitrust case, Ball adds. That case is slated to begin Oct. 15, 1998.