BALTIMORE (Reuters) - A federal judge on Thursday compared Microsoft Corp.'s MSFT.O treatment of Sun Microsystems Inc. SUNW.O to the 1994 knee-clubbing of Olympic skater Nancy Kerrigan, but indicated he might not grant Sun the immediate relief it seeks.

During a third day of hearings in the civil antitrust case, U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz remained receptive to forcing Microsoft to resume carrying Sun's Java program but wondered if Sun truly faced immediate and irreparable harm.

Motz did not hide his skepticism about Microsoft's behavior.

"Isn't there a social value in being able to participate fairly in a market, undistorted by your competitors?" Motz asked Microsoft's final witness.

University of Chicago economist Kevin Murphy had testified that Microsoft's past misdeeds did not justify a must-carry order on Java. Such an order would be "messed up," robbing Microsoft of some of its incentive to improve Windows.

Motz at that point compared Microsoft's acts against Java to the assault on Kerrigan by the ex-husband of rival skater Tonya Harding.

A QUESTION OF HARM

Microsoft, which had promoted an incompatible form of Java that worked best on Windows and taken other steps to hinder Java, was like a baseball team that had stolen game signals from the other side, Motz said.

But Motz was clearly troubled about whether the standard of harm had been met to grant Sun a preliminary injunction.

"Your position doesn't hold up on that, does it?" Motz challenged Sun's attorney Rusty Day.

Summing up for Microsoft, lawyer David Tulchin said it had not been shown the market would tip to Microsoft .Net Internet services software if Java was not in Windows.

"Seems to me the jig is up, the motion needs to be denied," Tulchin told the court.

Motz said he would rule on the preliminary injunction in 10 days.

In court on Wednesday, Motz had suggested Sun drop its request for the preliminary injunction and put aside a claim for more than $1 billion in damages in favor of going directly to trial on the issue of getting Java back in Windows.

Sun, based in Santa Clara, California, claims that Microsoft views Sun's Java software as a threat because it can run on a variety of operating systems, not just on Microsoft's Windows.

A CLAIM OF SABOTAGE

Sun charges Microsoft has tried to sabotage Java by a series of actions, most recently dropping it from Windows XP, which was introduced last year.

Microsoft later reversed itself and said it would start including Java in a Windows XP update, but only until 2004.

Sun's antitrust lawsuit is one of several currently before Motz that have been filed in the wake of Microsoft's long-running antitrust fight with the government.

A settlement of the government suit was endorsed by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly on Nov. 1, although Massachusetts and West Virginia are appealing.

Sun filed its antitrust lawsuit in March, after a federal appeals court upheld a lower court ruling in the government case that Microsoft had broken U.S. antitrust laws and illegally maintained its monopoly in PC operating systems.

Motz also is overseeing cases filed by AOL Time Warner AOL.N unit Netscape Communications, Be Inc. and Burst.com BRST.OB , as well as class-action lawsuits filed by attorneys who are suing on behalf of consumers.