Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, set to rule as early as next week in the Microsoft antitrust trial, has made it clear he wants his final judgment to go straight to the US Supreme Court.

Eager to avoid the uncertainties of an appeal before the potentially hostile DC Circuit Court of Appeals, which harshly rejected one of his earlier rulings against Microsoft, Judge Jackson prefers taking his chances before the country's top nine justices.

But legal experts say he may have miscalculated both the Supreme Court's appetite to hear the case, and the eventual outcome.

Antitrust experts believe the justices will be deterred by the unusual circumstances of a rare "direct appeal" to the Supreme Court. Normally, cases reach the court only after extensive review by a lower appeals court. On direct appeal, the justices must scrutinise the whole voluminous record, and cannot follow their normal procedure of picking and choosing only the issues they want to review. So the court will probably send the case back to the DC circuit if it is asked to take it in the first place, a request which must be made by the solicitor general.

Microsoft could still end up before the top court, after appealing at the lower level.

But several antitrust scholars say they are not certain this is inevitable.

They caution against the notion that the current Supreme Court, no lover of the limelight, will be unable to resist the temptation to weigh in. Even if the court takes the case, the outcome may not be to Judge Jackson's liking, several experts say. Predicting the vote is difficult, because the antitrust views of some justices are not clear.

Still, any decision, if it ever comes, is unlikely to come soon. The court's clock, which is about to stop for the three-month summer recess, is firmly set to pre-Internet time.