Legal Question of the Week: when you're the CEO of the world's most influential software company and said company is on trial for alleged antitrust behavior, is it a bad thing when the judge laughs at you? Yeah, we thought so. Welcome to Week Five of "Redmond Justice," and while it has become increasingly clear lately that the judge is losing all patience with Microsoft, it might be a positive sign that he's retaining his sense of humor. (Positive sign for whom, you ask? That's left as an exercise for the viewer.) David Boies, the government's black-Niked legal eagle, showed more videotape of Bill Gates' August deposition today, and the results were comical; Gates tried really hard to duck the questions about his company's plans to crush Netscape, but his evasive maneuvers prompted laughter from the court-- Judge Jackson included. A Bloomberg News article has more details.

If you think it was inappropriate for the judge to laugh during the introduction of the evidence in question, you may be right; but Judge Jackson can hardly be blamed, since the taped exchange between Boies and Gates could coax a giggle from a clinically-depressed fuzzy-hatted Buckingham Palace guard with lockjaw. We wish we could have been there, as we suspect that one hasn't truly lived until one has heard the world's richest man quibble with a lawyer over the definitions of the words "concern," "compete," and "we." No fooling. For instance, when Boies asked Gates which "non-Microsoft browsers" he meant when he composed a particular email message in January of 1996, Gates' response was-- and we quote-- "I'm sure -- what's the question? Is it -- are you asking me about when I wrote this e-mail or what are you asking me about?" Er, yeah. And believe it or not, it actually gets worse from there.

We're assuming that Microsoft's team of lawyers is really looking forward to putting this whole episode behind them and focusing on the next hurdle-- namely, the testimony of Glenn Weadock, the president of Independent Software, Inc. and the government's next witness. Weadock is testifying that Internet Explorer's "integration" into Windows harms consumers, and presents the Microsoft defense team with a solvable problem to tackle. Much simpler than trying to explain the baffling behavior of your chief executive...