With all the activity heating up over the impending "Redmond Justice" season premiere (currently scheduled for September 23rd, though that could certainly change, given Microsoft's latest "let's subpoena several thousand documents from several really huge companies and only give them a one-week deadline" gambit), another lesser courtroom drama may have dropped somewhat from the public eye. Yes, the viewing public has a woefully short memory, and so the Nielsen ratings have dropped significantly on Sun's lawsuit against the Redmond Giant. But to be fair, there hasn't been a lot of activity in the case to hold the public's interest...

Think back hard; at the beginning of last year's television season, Sun sued Microsoft for violating its Java license, citing Microsoft's attempt to spike the brew with a decidedly Windows-flavored shot of code. Coming back to you now? Sun wanted Microsoft either to use true cross-platform Java as specified, or remove the "Java-compatible" logo from its non-compliant products. Once the suit was filed, it seemed that nothing exciting happened for months-- it was just one more legal battle to toss on the table for Microsoft's army of lawyers to tackle. But the slow wheels of justice crank inevitably onward, and now, just eleven months later, oral arguments in the case have been completed. While details are sketchy because the hearings were closed to the public (lots of juicy trade secrets were getting bounced around in there), a Computer Reseller News article quotes Sun's lawyer as saying that the arguments "went extremely well for Sun."

Of course, we've yet to see a lawyer be quoted as saying that a hearing went particularly badly for their clients; as you'd expect, Microsoft's lawyers also said they "performed well at the hearing." But still, it's an intriguing thought; while the whole world watches "Redmond Justice" because its outcome holds the potential to change Microsoft in a drastic manner, perhaps it's the Java case that will make the real difference; if Microsoft is somehow prevented from contaminating Java and the language fulfills its cross-platform, OS-agnostic promise, Windows may take a big hit, which is exactly what Microsoft is so afraid of. See, there's some drama there-- it's a shame that the case doesn't have a better publicist, no?