It is true that while every violation of civil law comes before the court as a civil action, but is it true that the existence of a civil action implies that no crime was committed?

Your mention of murder down-thread is an excellent example, as someone can commit an act of murder and face a criminal murder trial and/or a civil "wrongful death" case. O.J. Simpson is a famous, high-profile example of this.

You are basically taking the same position that his P.R. people might: that since he was acquitted in the criminal case, he is not a criminal - even though he lost the civil case. Yes, in the "innocent until proven guilty" sense of the word "criminal", you and they have an excellent technical point.

But you and they would have us to believe that O.J. actually committed no crime, and that might work on anyone who does not reserve the right to draw a distinction between having committed a crime and having been convicted of it.

Back to Microsoft, ask yourself what the Sherman Act is: is it civil law or criminal law? As it happens, the Sherman Act includes both criminal and civil remedies for violations. That is why, for example, books like this exist...

http://www.amazon.com/Criminal-Antitrust-Litigation-Handbook...

The DoJ pressed the matter as a civil action. This doesn't mean that Microsoft's violations were merely civil violations. Rather, it means that the civil violations were the ones that were successfully prosecuted. Whether or not their violations were also criminal in nature is a question that was never pursued.

So, yeah, Microsoft's actions were non-criminal an an O.J. kind of way. I'll give you that.