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by Patrick Thibodeau

(IDG) -- Sun Microsystems Inc. won a legal skirmish in court Tuesday in its Java lawsuit against Microsoft Corp., as U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte reinstated some of the injunctions governing Microsoft's use of Java.

In the action, Judge Whyte reinstated some of the terms of his 1998 preliminary injunction, which prevented Microsoft from distributing operating systems, browsers or tools that fail to pass Sun's Java compatibility test, or from failing to warn developers that incompatible tool kit products will result in applications that will run only on Microsoft's implementations.

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But the decision, said Microsoft, has no real impact because the company said it had never veered from terms of the preliminary injunction.

"It's a status quo -- it affects our customers in no way, it affects our products in no way," said Microsoft spokesman Jim Cullinan.

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In the fall of 1998, Whyte issued an injunction ordering Microsoft to make its products compatible with Sun's Java specifications. Products affected included Windows 98 and Internet Explorer. Microsoft appealed the decision but said it had complied with the order.

But an appeals court later lifted the injunction, taking issue with some of the grounds upon which Judge Whyte's injunction was based, especially the copyright-violation claims. In reinstating the injunction, the judge focused instead on contract issues.

"We are gratified that Judge Whyte reinstated the preliminary injunctive relief needed to redress this injury to competition, and that he did so after finding that Microsoft's business practices had been unfair," said Sun general counsel Michael Morris in a statement.

But Cullinan said the decision was good news for its case because it "reverses a previous decision on copyright infringement."

"Microsoft's behavior has to be looked at through the scope of the contract, not through a copyright infringement view," said Cullinan.

The lawsuit, filed in 1997, claims that Microsoft sought to take control of Java by "polluting" it with its own changes. Microsoft has always asserted that any changes it made were designed to improve Java's functioning with the Windows operating system.