Microsoft suffers stunning EU antitrust defeat
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BRUSSELS/LUXEMBOURG  - Microsoft suffered a stunning defeat on Monday when a European Union court backed a European Commission ruling that the U.S. software giant illegally abused its market power to crush competitors.
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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) on the software giant.
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LUXEMBOURG, Sept. 30 -- European regulators testified here Thursday that before settlement talks with Microsoft Corp. broke down last spring, the company had agreed to  antitrust sanctions that the software giant now claims would cause irreparable harm to its business and is fighting to stave off.
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Microsoft lost a major appeal Wednesday when a European court ruled that the world&#39;s largest software company must comply with sanctions imposed by regulators and strip features from its Windows product.
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Microsoft Corp ended three years of resistance on Monday, finally agreeing to comply with a landmark 2004 antitrust decision by the European Commission.
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Loses appeal but can ditch trustee oversight Microsoft has lost its appeal against European Commission charges of anti-competitive behaviour.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft suffered a humiliating legal defeat Monday when it lost a court appealÂ to overturn the European Commission's 2004 antitrust ruling against it. The decision took most observers by surprise. The Court of First Instance, Europe's second highest court based in Luxembourg, sided squarely with Europe's top antitrust regulator on the two central issues in the case. Most commentators expected a mixed verdict. While the details of the lengthy court decision are still being examined in their minutiae, some consequences are already clear: The ruling pulls a legal rug from under Microsoft's strategy of bundling software onto its Windows operating system, providing a powerful legal reference point for any future antitrust litigation against the company, and it strengthens the Commission's authority, especially when dealing with antitrust abuse in the fast-moving information technology industry. The Commission was right to rule against Microsoft's strategy of bundling its Media Player application into the Windows operating system, the court concluded, after three years deliberation. Similarly, Microsoft acted illegally by refusing to share the required interoperability information needed by rivals to build server operating systems that work smoothly with Windows, the court said. Microsoft's most senior lawyer, Brad Smith said the court decision was "disappointing." He hasn't decided whether to appeal it to the top court, the Court of Justice. If Microsoft does this, it can only dispute points of law, not facts established in Monday's ruling. Smith said Monday's court ruling has important implications for Microsoft's strategy of bundling together a range of applications with the Windows operating system. This strategy has proved effective in the past. Microsoft eclipsed Netscape in the mid 1990s when it bundled in its Internet Explorer application into the operating system. And RealPlayer dominated the market for streaming media applications until Microsoft started bundling its Media Player into Windows in 1999. The Commission initially hoped to save RealPlayer from Netscape's fate by ordering Microsoft in 2004 to sell a second unbundled version of Windows, but it was too late. The market had tipped irreversibly in favor of Microsoft even before the 2004 ruling. The Commission's remedy to restore competition to the streaming media software market in 2004 was to order Microsoft to sell a second version, later dubbed Windows N, with Media Player stripped out. But the remedy has had no impact on the market. Nevertheless, winning the bundling argument in court was the most important victory of the day for the Commission, and for other companies that believe they suffered from Microsoft's unfair bundling strategy, according to Commission officials and lawyers following the case. "This is an important precedent, not just for this particular product on this particular market," said Competition commissioner Neelie Kroes at a press conference Monday. There isn't a queue of complainants lined up, she said, but she added that "they are welcome." Thomas Vinje, legal counsel for the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, (ECIS) a Commission ally in the case, said the Commission's authority to regulate competition in the IT industry has been strengthened by the court ruling. "It has strengthened their hand," he said, adding that he will encourage the Commission to move swiftly ahead with the antitrust complaint ECIS filed to the European regulator two years ago. However, he dismissed claims made during the day that the ruling would be a threat for all successful companies. "The Microsoft case is very rare in that it concerns a super-dominant company," he said. "The Commission may be emboldened by the endorsement of the court to take action against other companies in the IT industry -- There may be issues to be addressed concerningÂ Google's dominance of search, or with its plans to take over DoubleClick, but they bear little resemblance to the specific issues in the Microsoft case. The only real implications from the Microsoft case are for Microsoft itself," he added.
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Microsoft Corp. lost a European Union court appeal on Wednesday against sanctions imposed by EU regulators that will force it to change business practices and sell a stripped-down version of Windows.
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A European court has upheld the bulk of an antitrust ruling against Microsoft Corp. made by the European Commission in 2004
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Microsoft failed Monday in its bid to overturn aÂ European Commission antitrust rulingÂ against it, when the European Union's second highest court dismissed the company's appeal and ordered it to pay the bulk of the Commission's legal expenses.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft failed Monday in its bid to overturn aÂ European Commission antitrust rulingÂ against it, when the European Union's second highest court dismissed the company's appeal and ordered it to pay the bulk of the Commission's legal expenses. TheÂ long-awaited decisionÂ by the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg supports the Commission, the E.U.'s top antitrust regulator, on the two essential aspects of the case. The Commission was right to take action to prevent Microsoft from bundling in Windows Media Player into the Windows operating system, the court concluded. It was also right to force Microsoft to reveal interoperability information to makers of server operating systems. An order for Microsoft to pay a fine of â¬497 million (then around $600 million) also still stands. The only fault the court found in the Commission was the powers it granted to an independent monitoring trustee to oversee Microsoft's implementation of its 2004 antitrust ruling. Brad Smith, Microsoft's top lawyer, said: "We'll study this decision carefully and if there are additional steps that we need to take to comply with it, we will take them." European Commission President JosÃ© Manuel Barroso welcomed the ruling. "This judgment confirms the objectivity and the credibility of the Commission's competition policy. This policy protects the European consumer interest and ensures fair competition between businesses," he said. The Commission's allies also hailed the decision. "This is a great day for European businesses and consumers," said Thomas Vinje, who heads the legal team for the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS). "This decision opens the prospect for dynamic competition in the software industry. No more user lock-in, no more monopoly pricing," he said. Georg Greve, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), said: "Through tactics that successfully derailed antitrust processes in other parts of the world, including the United States, Microsoft has managed to postpone this day for almost a decade. But thanks to the perseverance and excellent work of the European Commission, these tactics have now failed in Europe." Carlo Piana, FSFE's legal counsel, described the court ruling as "a milestone for competition. It puts an end to the notion that deliberate obfuscation of standards and designed lock-in is an acceptable business model, and forces Microsoft back into competing on the grounds of software technology." Software developer Jeremy Allison, co-author of the open source print and file server Samba, also approved the ruling. "This is a very important day for the Samba team: we hope to finally compete on a level playing field, without being denied access to interoperability information. Samba would then be able to offer consumers real choice, with the benefits of software freedom," he said. However, an industry group on Microsoft's side said the ruling was bad for small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). "The Commission just got a treat from the court, but SMEs and consumers will actually foot the bill. Microsoft did not win today, but it is European software developers and consumers that really lost," said Jonathan Zuck, president of the Association for Competitive Technology. It will take several hours and days to get a true assessment of the implications, he said, suggesting that the detail of the ruling might yet contain a "silver lining" for SMEs. "Following today's judgment, consumers and developers are unlikely to see the technologies they are demanding -- like voice recognition and multitouch interfaces -- integrated into Windows," he said. The implications of Monday's historic court ruling are being assessed by lawyers on both sides of the case, but already some things are clear. On the bundling question, the court stood by the Commission's order to Microsoft to develop a version of Windows with the Media Player stripped out. "The court makes clear that Microsoft retains the right to continue to offer the version of Windows bundled with Windows Media Player and that it is required only to make it possible for consumers to obtain the operating system without that media player, a measure which does not mean any change in Microsoft's current technical practice other than the development of that version of Windows," the court said in a statement summarizing the lengthy appeal ruling. Meanwhile, there was little room for interpretation of the court's decision concerning the interoperability side of the case. The court agreed with the Commission's finding that "Microsoft's refusal [to share interoperability information] limits technical development to the prejudice of consumers." Regarding the trustee, the court said the Commission was out of order granting the trustee an automatic right of access to Microsoft documents, premises and employees. It also said the Commission was wrong to make Microsoft pay all the trustee's expenses. Microsoft was ordered to pay 80 percent of the Commission's expenses, as well as those incurred by the Commission's allies in the case, including ECIS, as well as 80 percent of its own expenses. The Commission must pick up the tab for the remaining 20 percent. Microsoft's allies, including the Association for Competitive Technologies have to foot the bill for their own legal expenses.
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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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A European court dismisses Microsoft's appeal in a long-running dispute about competition.
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Microsoft Corp. has made substantial concessions to the European Commission, finally bringing the company into compliance with a 2004 antitrust ruling, the Commission said Monday.
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The European Union's second-highest court on Monday dismissed Microsoft Corp.'s appeal against an EU antitrust order that ordered it to share communications code with rivals and sell a copy of Windows without Media Player.
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Microsoft has lost its appeal against a record 497m euro fine imposed by the European Commission in a long-running competition dispute. A probe concluded in 2004 that Microsoft was guilty of freezing out rivals in server software and products such as media players.
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Microsoft Corp. fought yesterday for a suspension of a landmark European Union antitrust ruling pending its appeal, arguing that being forced to share its closely guarded software codes with rivals now would do it irreversible damage.