Update 13: Microsoft, EU Battle Over Antitrust Order
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Microsoft Corp. goes into round two Friday of its battle to get the European Union&#39;s sweeping antitrust ruling lifted having told a judge that it had been prepared during settlement talks to share more software
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(InfoWorld) - MicrosoftÂ has filed an appeal against the latest antitrust fine imposed on it by the European Commission, a Microsoft spokesman said on Tuesday. The Commission, Europe's top competition authority,Â fined the software maker â¬280.5 millionÂ in July failing to comply with its 2004 antitrust ruling. "Microsoft filed the appeal yesterday, as it said it would back in July," said Tom Brookes, Microsoft's spokesman in Brussels. The Court of First Instance in Luxembourg is already considering Microsoft's appeal of the 2004 ruling, which ordered it to sell a version of Windows in Europe without its media player software, release some of its server protocols to competitors, and pay a fine of almost â¬500 million. The court is likely to rule on the first appeal towards the end of this year or in the first half of next year. A conclusion to the latest legal challenge is likely to be years away. Microsoft has claimed from the beginning that it is committed to honoring the Commission's 2004 antitrust ruling. It paid the fine promptly and has offered a second version of Windows XP without Windows Media Player, although sales of that version have been almost nonexistent. The Commission has been more concerned about what it sees as Microsoft's failure to submit the required protocol information. In July its patience ran out. Announcing the â¬280.5 million fine, the European Commissioner in charge of competition, Neelie Kroes, said the documentation the company had submitted "fell significantly short of what was required". MicrosoftÂ submitted new informationÂ to the Commission shortly after that, which the Commission is still studying. Kroes has said she is confident that Microsoft's "foot-dragging" is over. "They are making constructive efforts now," she said, adding: "It's a shame they didn't do so two years ago." To deter any further deliberate delays in complying with the 2004 ruling, the Commission has increased the future fines for failing to comply. The â¬280.5 million fine was calculated using a daily fine of â¬1.5 million from Dec. 16 last year to June 20, the day on which Microsoft made a more concerted effort to comply, according to the Commission. Meanwhile, European antitrust officials have beenÂ busy studying Windows Vista, the next version of Microsoft's operating system due to go on sale later this year and early next. They are concerned that some new features in Vista may break the same antitrust laws that formed the backbone of the 2004 ruling. Microsoft has warned that Vista's launch could be delayed in Europe due to problems with European regulators.
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LUXEMBOURG - Microsoft Corp has began round two of its fight to have the European Union&#39;s sweeping antitrust ruling lifted, arguing it would ultimately hurt consumers and cause confusion in the market.
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The European Union (EU) Court of First Instance has upheld sanctions slapped by the European Commission against Microsoft Corporation, ordering the world&#39;s largest software company to change business practices and reveal some trade secrets.
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A European Union judge is due to decide this week if antitrust sanctions imposed on Microsoft  should be suspended -- a move the software giant hopes would lead to new settlement talks.
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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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Microsoft is looking for additional European-based firms to file challenges against the European Union&#39;s US$600 million ruling against the software giant.
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Microsoft  suffered a decisive  antitrust defeat on Monday when a European Union court upheld a  landmark ruling that the world&#39;s largest software maker had  abused its dominant market position to crush rivals.
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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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As judgment day in the nine-year-long antitrust battle between Microsoft and the European Commission draws near, neither side in the protracted dispute knows for sure how it will react to the news on the day.
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Microsoft Corp.'s five-year legal battle in Europe moves into a public courtroom for the first time as the U.S. software giant tries to get the European Union's landmark antitrust ruling against it lifted.
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Microsoft's  compliance with a  landmark European Union antitrust decision has opened  competition for servers, where one rival says it now has a  fighting chance to take on the software giant's dominance.
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The antitrust sanctions imposed by the European Commission against Microsoft were upheld by a senior European judge on Wednesday, dealing a further blow to the US software giant in its long-running feud with the Brussels regulator.
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The European Court of First Instance has set a date of September 17 to rule on Microsoft's appeal of a 2004 antitrust verdict that forced it to pay over $600 million in fines and make changes to its Windows operating systems. Microsoft has maintained it did nothing anti-competitive.
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A European Union court will decide on Monday whether Microsoft abused its near-monopoly position on the world's 1 billion computers and servers to push smaller competitors out of the marketplace.
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Two of the European Union&#39;s landmark antitrust decisions against US companies are in court this week as WorldCom Inc. seeks a moral victory and Microsoft Corp.
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While Microsoft (MSFT ) has extinguished most of its legal flare-ups in the US, its fires in Europe continue to rage. The European Commission&#39;s antitrust unit is still tussling with the software giant over