long antitrust battles 2 Redmond/Waltham, U.S.A. The trade group had been a key advocate of the U.S. Department of Justice antitrust case against Microsoft. Over past months, U.S. appeals courts have upheld both a settlement in the U.S. case and a judge's refusal to mete out tougher restraints on the software maker. Under Monday's agreement, CCIA said it would not appeal those rulings to the Supreme Court, which "effectively" ends the U.S. antitrust case, Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft's European counsel, was quoted as saying by Bloomberg. The U.S. settlements require Microsoft to give computer makers freedom to promote software that competes with the company's products. --SP 2317 Local Time 2017 GMT
