Microsoft files new antitrust documents with EU
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Microsoft Corp.  filed revised  documents with the European Commission on Thursday aimed at  complying with a landmark antitrust decision from 2004, the  European Commission said.
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BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The European Union escalated its trans-Atlantic fight with Microsoft Corp. yesterday , threatening huge new fines against the software maker over claims it is asking rivals to pay too much for information that would help their servers work with Windows.
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Microsoft agrees to comply with the European Commission's anti-monopoly ruling against it.
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The European Commission will fine  Microsoft  between 200 million (&#36;255 million) and 300  million euros on Wednesday to punish it for failing to carry  out antitrust sanctions, sources familiar with the situation  said on Tuesday.
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Microsoft Corp., the world&#39;s largest software maker, will tell a European Union judge the EU&#39;s antitrust ruling forcing the company to offer a version of Windows without a video and music
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The European Union's top competition   regulator clashed with Microsoft on Tuesday over security   upgrades in the U.S. software giant's new Windows Vista   operating system in a re-run of past antitrust battles.
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(InfoWorld) - A U.S. district judge on Tuesday praised the schedule set up in a revamped technical documentation project that's part of the 4-year-old antitrust settlement between Microsoft Corp. and the U.S. government. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, hailed a new plan that would deliver 58 documents related to Microsoft's software communication protocols by Dec. 15, with more documents coming in February, April and May. Kollar-Kotelly in May approvedÂ a two-year extension to parts of her antitrust judgment against Microsoft because of ongoing problems in the technical documentation for Microsoft's software communication protocols. "I hope this approach works," Kollar-Kotelly said during Tuesday's antitrust compliance hearing. "We seem to be on the correct time table." Kollar-Kotelly, in an antitrust settlement approved in November 2002, ordered Microsoft to create the technical documentation so that competing software companies can buy licenses to Microsoft's communications protocols and make products that work with Microsoft software. The judge expressed support for the new plan after numerous delays and past complaints about the quality of technical documentation."We'll have to see if this achieves the [results] that have eluded us so far," she said after Microsoft representatives explained the technical documentation "reset," as they called it. Under the plan, Microsoft delivered 32 technical documents to the court-mandated technical committee overseeing the settlement by Oct. 25, and is on track to deliver another 26 documents by Dec. 15. The technical documentation that's most useful to protocol licensees will be delivered first, Microsoft said. The schedule has Microsoft delivering another 99 technical documents between Feb. 22 and May 29. About 90 days after the initial release of a document, Microsoft will give the technical committee and licensees an online build of the document. In addition, there were 943 identified problems with the current technical documentation as of Oct. 31, up from 835 problems identified as of Sept. 30, according to court records. Microsoft will work on fixing those problems as part of the revamped documentation project, said Robert Muglia, senior vice president of Microsoft's server and tools business. Lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice and some of the plaintiff states in the antitrust case said the documentation plan seems to be working. But Stephen Houck, a lawyer for the California group of state plaintiffs in the case, noted that hundreds of problems still exist in the current documentation. "While much as been accomplished, there's much left to do," Houck said. Muglia walked the judge through an example of the new technical documentation, and Kollar-Kotelly noted the new version had "a lot more details." "My only wish is that it had been done earlier, so we wouldn't be at this point," she said.
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The European Commission, fresh from a major court victory over Microsoft, launched new antitrust investigations into the software giant on Monday on suspicion it abused its market dominance to favor its Web browser and Office product.
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As part of a European antitrust settlement, Microsoft will supply protocol documentation to developers of the open-source software.
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European Union regulators said Microsoft Corp. handed in on time to meet a Thursday deadline information about its Windows operating software that should help other software companies.
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The European Commission, the antitrust arm of the European Union, has ordered Microsoft to offer a version of Windows without a bundled media player and to disclose more technical information to its rivals on a temporary, or interim, basis until the
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Microsoft filed formal paperwork Wednesday to extend part of an antitrust judgment against the company for at least two years. The extension of U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly's November 2002 antitrust settlement would give Microsoft more time to complete work on technical documentation for licensees of its communications protocols. The DOJ and Microsoft filed a joint request Wednesday for Kollar-Kotelly to approve the extension, which the DOJ proposed in May. The antitrust order had been scheduled to expire in November 2007. If the judge approves the two-year extension, the DOJ and 17 state plaintiffs in the antitrust case can ask for an additional three-year extension if they still have complaints about Microsoft documentation. Microsoft has said it will not oppose a second extension. Under the settlement, Microsoft is required to license the communication protocols to other IT vendors interested in developing server software that works with Microsoft's Windows operating system. But as of May, hundreds of bugs in the technical documentation remained. A technical committee working with the antitrust plaintiffs identified 575 bugs in the technical documentation as of Feb. 8. By March 16, Microsoft had whittled the bugs identified by the technical committee down to 307, but the number of high-priority bugs grew from 68 to 71 in that period. By May 8, the number of high-priority bugs with a 60-day deadline grew to 79, and the total number of bugs identified by the technical committee was 414.
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(InfoWorld) - No one used the 'L' word, but both sides in the Microsoft Corp. antitrust battle in Europe accused each other of lying about basic facts surrounding the latest twist in the long-running saga that emerged Thursday. The European Commission sent Microsoft a so-called statement of objections Thursday accusing the software vendor of failing to provide interoperability information on "reasonable and non-discriminatory terms." This was a requirement laid out in the landmark 2004 antitrust ruling against the company. In its statement the Commission said the software giant proposes overcharging for vital interoperability information needed by software makers to allow their products to work properly with the Windows operating system. It dismissed almost all of the information Microsoft proposed revealing as not innovative and therefore not worth the price the company wants to charge to license it. Competition commissioner Neelie Kroes said Microsoft had agreed that the innovativeness of the information should be the main criterion when setting the price, but in a conference call with journalists later Thursday, Microsoft top lawyer Brad Smith denied his company had agreed innovativeness should be the main criterion. "We told the Commission we believe innovation is one of three main elements. We don't have the same interpretation of what had been established [between Microsoft and the Commission]," he said. Then ECIS, the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, accused Microsoft of misleading journalists by citing a study by accountants Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), which, according to the software company, shows that the prices Microsoft wants to charge for licenses to the interoperability information are 30 percent below normal market rates. "It is an outrageous comparison," said Thomas Vinje, ECIS's legal advisor and a partner in the Brussels office of law firm Clifford Chance. "The PWC study compares the prices Microsoft wants to charge with the market price for much more valuable information such as software code, documentation, and full redistribution rights," he said. "What people will get with Microsoft's interoperability information is a lot less valuable. To compare it with the sort of information in the PWC study is like comparing apples with... some withered fruit," he added. The actual prices Microsoft wants to charge for licensing out the interoperability information are too complicated to share with journalists, Microsoft spokesman Tom Brookes said. He warned inquisitive journalists that there is no simple price list. The Commission believes that if all software vendors bought licenses it would amount to around 35 percent of the net profit of the industry. Microsoft's Smith dismissed this, saying: "I don't think you can conclude that." He said that if all vendors bought the licenses the total revenue Microsoft would earn would total around US$30 million -- a tiny fraction of annual software industry profits. "That $30 million figure bears no resemblance to reality, and if Microsoft can't explain how they reached this figure it has absolutely no value," Vinje said. Microsoft has four weeks to respond toÂ the latest statement of objections, after which it faces daily fines of up to â¬3 million (US$3.9 million). In the meantime, the Commission is expected to conclude its assessment of the substance of the interoperability information Microsoft submitted. It doesn't have to be innovative. In fact Microsoft's rivals, including ECIS, argue that much of the information competitors need in order to build their software so that it interoperates with the ubiquitous Windows OS on PCs is quite straightforward. Nevertheless, if it isn't revealed then rivals are stuck, Vinje said. Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd told journalists Thursday that Microsoft's continued failure to comply with the antitrust ruling is unprecedented. "In the 50 years of European antitrust policy, it's the first time we've been confronted with a company that has failed to comply with an antitrust decision," he said. "You have to look at their attitude faced with other antitrust authorities in other jurisdictions. This is a company that apparently does not like to have to conform with antitrust decisions," Todd added.
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Microsoft has made substantial concessions to the European Commission, finally bringing the company into compliance with a&#160;2004 antitrust ruling, the Commission said Monday.
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Microsoft Corp has submitted documents  required by the European Commission in an effort to avoid  further fines for breaching an antitrust ruling, the European  Union regulator said on Monday.
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BRUSSELS, Belgium  -- European antitrust regulators said Monday they have extended their review of a deal between Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Time Warner Inc...
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Description: A European court says software giant Microsoft must share some trade secrets with its top rivals, and also ordered Microsoft to produce a stripped-down version of its Windows operating system.