Microsoft Appeals `Monopoly' Ruling.

Byline: William Glanz

Feb. 27--Lawyers for Redmond, Wash.-based software giant Microsoft Corp. told the U.S. Court of Appeals yesterday the company did not illegally stifle competition.

Microsoft and the federal government fielded a barrage of questions from all seven judges in the company's appeal of a federal judge's ruling that the company violated U.S. antitrust law and should be split in two.

Lawyers spent the first of two days of oral arguments fighting about Microsoft maintaining a monopoly in the market for operating systems and about the company's practice of tying Internet Explorer, its popular Web browser, to the Windows operating system to market a single, dominant product.

Neither Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Minear nor Microsoft attorney Richard Urowsky escaped the courtroom before undergoing aggressive questioning.

Microsoft is trying to reverse …