It comes less than two weeks after the company, the world's largest software maker, agreed to pay Sun Microsystems $1.6 billion to settle Sun's private antitrust suit against Microsoft and to resolve patent claims. The InterTrust settlement removes a threat to Microsoft's ability to deliver piracy protection technology in its software products for playing and handling digital media. The technology for so-called digital rights management, analysts say, is crucial for Microsoft's plans to extend its Windows software into the emerging market for legally distributing music and movies over the Internet, in competition with rivals like Apple, RealNetworks, Sony and others. Last week, Microsoft and Time Warner announced that they had acquired a majority stake in another developer of digital rights management technology, ContentGuard, a small company spun out of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. The terms of the purchase were not disclosed.