Opera files EU antitrust suit against Microsoft
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Opera Software has filed an antitrust suit against Microsoft in the European Union, accusing it of stifling competition by tying its Internet Explorer Web browser to Windows, the Norwegian company said Thursday.
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THE RULING: Microsoft Corp. lost an appeal at the European Union's Court of First Instance to get a landmark 2004 antitrust ruling and record 497 million euro ($613 million) fine overturned.
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Web browser developer Opera Software ASA said Thursday it had complained to the European Commission about Microsoft Corp., calling on regulators to force the company to give users a choice of Internet software with its Windows operating system.
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Microsoft has dropped two outstanding appeals of European antitrust rulings, following the deal struck with the European Commission at the beginning of this week, the company said in a statement Wednesday.Last year, Microsoft appealed the &#8364;280.5 million fine it incurred for failing to provide interoperability protocols to rivals, as required in the landmark 2004 European Commission antitrust ruling. The appeal was filed with the Court of First Instance (CFI).It also appealed against the Commission&#39;s demands that it make the protocols available to open-source software developers.However, in light of&#160;the agreement reached between Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes&#160;on Monday, these appeals became redundant.Less than a month after suffering&#160;a crushing defeat in its original appeal of the 2004 ruling, Microsoft said Monday it would finally comply with that ruling. All the required interoperability protocols would be made available to the open-source community and the price for them would be slashed, Microsoft said.The two outstanding appeals to the CFI were no longer necessary, said Erich Andersen, European General Counsel for Microsoft.&quot;We believe it&#39;s important at this stage to focus all of our energies on complying with our legal obligations and strengthening our constructive relationship with the European Commission,&quot; he said in the statement.The Commission welcomed the withdrawal of the appeals, spokesman Jonathan Todd said.The only loose end remaining in the nine-year long antitrust battle between the world&#39;s biggest software maker and Europe&#39;s top competition authority is the calculation of fines still to be paid for Microsoft&#39;s three and a half years of non-compliance.The &#8364;280.5 million fine imposed in July last year was the sum of daily fines of &#8364;2 million for not honoring the ruling to that date. When that fine was announced, Kroes said the Commission would increase the daily fine to &#8364;3 million.Microsoft was officially deemed in compliance with the 2004 ruling on Monday, over 14 months after the last fine was imposed. A rough calculation would put the new fine at close to &#8364;1 billion. When added to the &#8364;280.5 million fine imposed last year and the original &#8364;497 million fine imposed in 2004 the total of antitrust fines in the case is about &#8364;1.8 billion.The Commission will announce the final tally toward the end of this year, Todd said.
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US software giant Microsoft is to launch its legal appeal Thursday against a stinging EU anti-trust ruling, six months after it was fined nearly half a billion euros for abusing its market dominance.
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Attorney Thomas Vinje represents a coalition of Microsoft rivals charging the company with ongoing antitrust violations in Europe.
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Software giant Microsoft  has filed an appeal against a 280.5 million euro ($356.4 million) fine the European Commission imposed in July, holding it defied a 2004 antitrust ruling.
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Microsoft lost on Monday a landmark EU antitrust case at Europe&#39;s second-highest court, which upheld a record 497-million-euro (690-million-dollar) fine imposed by the European Commission in 2004.
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A European Union court rules on Monday  whether Microsoft abused its near-monopoly on computer  operating systems to push out rivals, in a protracted case that  has major implications on the EU's power to enforce antitrust  policy.
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The European Commission said Monday it was suing Germany over a law allowing Deutsche Telekom AG to keep rivals off its high-speed Internet networks.
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Novell has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, accusing the software giant of unfairly eliminating competition for office productivity applications during the time Novell owned the WordPerfect word processing application and the Quattro Pro
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PARIS, Sept. 17 -- A European Union court Monday rejected Microsoft's appeal of a European antitrust order requiring it to share software information with rivals and pay a record $690 million in fines for quashing competition.
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A top European Union judge  challenged the EU executive's reasoning in its antitrust court  battle with Microsoft Corp. Friday, questioning why it opposed  the U.S. software giant's setting industry standards.
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A top European court on Monday handed Microsoft a surprise defeat in its epic antitrust battles, backing the European Commission&#39;s 2004 record fine of 497 million euros (690 million dollars) against the software giant.
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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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The European Commission warned  Microsoft on Thursday it faced further fines in its antitrust  case for seeking unreasonable prices from software makers for  interoperability information.
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Opera argues that because each version of Windows comes with only IE preinstalled, Microsoft has an unfair advantage against rivals like Opera and Firefox.