The plaintiffs in the antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. claim they have uncovered evidence that the software company is in violation of its 2002 agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice.

Roxanne Conlin, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs, said her team uncovered information that she will turn over to the Justice Department. She said she could not comment about what she’s uncovered because the court prohibited the information from being shared publicly. Polk County District Judge Scott Rosenberg granted the plaintiffs’ motion to inform the DOJ of what they have found last week.

“This doesn’t benefit our case in any way, but we felt we had to do it,” Conlin said.

Rich Wallis, associate general counsel at Microsoft, said the company did not oppose the motion but did offer a process to ensure that confidential materials are not inappropriately disclosed to the public.

“There has never been a finding that there was a breach of that agreement,” Wallis said. “We’ve worked very closely with the Department of Justice since the federal case was settled.”

As part of its agreement with the DOJ, Microsoft must go before a federal judge four times a year to ensure that the company is complying with all aspects of the consent decree. The latest hearing was in early December, and the court found no wrongdoing.

This week, the plaintiffs plan to call David Bradford, former general counsel for Novell Inc. Conlin said he is expected to testify about Microsoft’s attempts to merge with Novell after it acquired Digital Research Inc., a company who was making an operating system to compete with Microsoft Windows. Conlin said his testimony will show that the purpose of the merger talks was to either destroy DR-DOS, the rival operating system, or simply derail its development.

Wallis said the plaintiffs’ case continues to focus on things that happened many years ago that are no longer significant.

The plaintiffs have also received permission from the court to maintain a Web site in order to provide the public access to daily court transcripts, admitted exhibits and other information on the trial. More than 3,000 exhibits will eventually be available online at www.iowaconsumercase.com