WASHINGTON - A group of states Tuesday asked a federal judge overseeing Microsoft Corp's antitrust oversight agreement to extend sections of it to 2012.

Attorney Stephen Houck, speaking for California and several other states, asked for an extension for a portion of the 2002 consent decree settlement that deals with middleware, the programs that connect software with the operating system.

That portion is set to expire in two months, but Houck asked for an additional five years "to make sure that Microsoft does in fact practice what it preaches."

Under the settlement, Microsoft was required to create a Microsoft Communications Protocol Program, or MCPP, to allow software created for Microsoft's Windows operating systems to also work on rival operating systems like Unix and Linux.

"Clearly this has not happened," Houck told the hearing in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. "None of the parties in their filings claim that the MCPP has been successful."

He also criticized Microsoft for delays in putting out documentation for MCPP, telling District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly that he did not know if the problem was Microsoft's "incompetence," "negligence" or "willfulness."

Microsoft's lawyer, Rick Rule, said any further extension of the court's MCPP oversight was premature as oversight of this portion of the agreement had already been extended from 2007 to 2009.

"The appropriate time to consider whether this should be extended is 2009," Rule told the judge.

Kollar-Kotelly issued no immediate ruling. The parties are due to file written submissions next month with a further court hearing set for Nov. 6.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz)

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