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If the judge agrees to the delay, the case could be stalled by up to three months while the appeal is decided, postponing the revelation of any more embarrassing internal emails which have so far shown that both partners and employees were uneasy about branding certain, lower powered machines "Vista Capable".

"Continued proceedings here would cost Microsoft a substantial sum of money for discovery and divert key personnel from full-time tasks," the company writes in its appeal. "[It]

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would intrude on sensitive pricing decisions and strategies by OEMs, wholesalers and retailers; and would jeopardise Microsoft's goodwill with class members, all with respect to claims that might not proceed on a class basis at all."

Microsoft goes on to argue that due to its class action status the case has already forced it to produce 50,000 pages of internal documentation, which is set to rise if the case continues.

However, should the class-action status be denied on appeal, it says this will have been time and money wasted and have only served to generate further negative publicity for the company.

The lawsuit, filed last year, claims that "Windows Vista Capable" stickers attached to PCs before launch were misleading as they suggested that the machines could run any version of the operating system, when in reality some were only capable of running Vista Home Basic.

The suit claims that the stickers led customers to pay more for those machines than they would have normally. This claim was one of the foundations for the court granting the case class action status, however, it is also one of the sticking points for Microsoft which wants the court to reassess this claim believing it to be inaccurate.