Gates video to go public

A US Appeals Court has said it will allow Bill Gates' controversial testimony to be released to the public.

The testimony was videotaped before the Microsoft anti-trust trial began, but until now, only excerpts from it have been shown.

When Microsoft lawyers tried to stop the piecemeal viewing of the videotape, but they were admonished by US District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who said: "If anything, I think the problem is with your witness, not with the way in which his testimony is being presented. I think it's evident to every spectator that, for whatever reasons, in many respects Mr. Gates has not been particularly responsive."

Microsoft's' lawyers argued that releasing the full testimony could create a 'media circus'. It is not known when the remaining 12 hours of Gates' testimony will be released.

The trial is scheduled to resume later today with the defence's third witness, Jim Allchin, Microsoft's senior vice president for personal and business systems.

Government lawyers are likely to focus on an email exchange between Allchin and a Microsoft software engineer. Last week Microsoft tried and failed to persuade the trial judge to exclude part of an internal email which goes into detail about how Microsoft combined its Internet browser software into Windows.

The government believes it will strengthen its assertion that Explorer and Windows were in fact two products combined together.