Richmond (Virginia), Feb 13: Microsoft Corp sought to strike a lower court order forcing it to include a rival's programming language in its Windows XP operating system. Microsoft's appeal yesterday to the 4th US circuit court of appeals argues that the ruling was flawed because the rival, Sun Microsystems Inc, did not prove immediate and irreparable harm, a standard required for preliminary injunctions.

Sun has filed a one billion dollar antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft and successfully won an injunction requiring Microsoft to include the latest version of Sun's Java in Windows XP and related systems. Sun argued that waiting until the antitrust case is decided could permanently kill Java, a technology designed to let programmers write software to run on all types of computers, whether they use windows, Apple's Macintosh or another operating system.

The preliminary injunction was granted in December and finalised on January 21 by a federal judge in Baltimore, though the appeals court on February 3 temporarily put the order on hold in anticipation of yesterday's filing. Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler said the order was unprecedented and "unnecessarily intervenes in the free operation of the marketplace and does not serve the public interest."

Officials at Sun Microsystems of Santa Clara, California, were reviewing the filing and planned a response on March 7, spokeswoman Lisa Poulson said. Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, would then have until March 18 to counter the response.

Bureau Report