Microsoft battles European regulators
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European regulators testified here yesterday that before settlement talks with Microsoft Corp. broke down last spring, the company had agreed to anti-trust sanctions that it now says would cause irreparable
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Microsoft's top legal advisor in Europe has urged the European Commission not to insist that key security features be stripped from its new Windows Vista operating system, amid an ongoing dispute.
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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.
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Microsoft faces on Monday a decisive chapter in its epic battles with antitrust regulators when Europe&#39;s second-highest court rules whether the software giant is guilty of abusing its crushing market share.
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A ruling against the European Commission in the Microsoft antitrust case could affect its ability to regulate competition.
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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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BRUSSELS, Belgium -- European Union regulators said Monday they were investigating whether software giant Microsoft Inc. used its market dominance to squeeze out office software and Internet browser rivals.
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LUXEMBOURG - The judge deciding whether Microsoft Corp. must comply with the European Commission's remedies for the company's antitrust violations questioned Friday whether the steps ordered by the Commission will effectively curb Microsoft's power.
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The European Commission turned up the  pressure on Microsoft  on Thursday, warning the U.S.  software giant of new fines and accusing it of serial defiance  of an antitrust ruling made nearly three years ago.
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The European Union's Competition Commission said today it might levy fines of $4 million a day against Microsoft amid concerns that the company is overcharging for the information rivals need to make their products work smoothly with Windows.
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The European commission, which fined Microsoft a record â¬497m (Â£345) this year for abusing its dominant position, yesterday vowed to continue pursuing the US software group through the courts for anti-competitive behaviour.
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The European Union threatened Microsoft Corp. on Thursday with fines as high as $4 million a day, claiming the software company was still not offering a fair deal to rivals
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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, a  spokeswoman for the European Union regulator said on Monday.
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The European Commission has opened two new antitrust investigations of Microsoft&#39;s activities.The first case is in response to a complaint from the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, a Brussels-based trade group of which Opera Software is a member, and concerns the interoperability of Windows with other software, the Commission said Monday.The second investigation is looking into Microsoft&#39;s tactic of bundling software products with its Windows operating system. This follows a complaint to the Commission by Opera, a Norwegian browser developer.Both issues featured in the Commission&#39;s landmark March 2004 antitrust decision against Microsoft, which the company unsuccessfully challenged in court.(More to come.)
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BRUSSELSâRegulators are set to argue that the European Union needs to take a tougher stand against Microsoft Corp. because its antitrust rules are different from those that allowed the company to avoid making
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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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Software giant Microsoft Corp. will for the first time be forced by antitrust regulators to change how it designs and sells its widely used Windows operating system, after a European Union