Federal Court to Hear Microsoft Appeal of Internet Explorer Case
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Software giant contesting order to pay &#36;521 million in patent infringement verdict.
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A European Union court will rule in mid-December on an appeal by US software giant Microsoft to suspend EU sanctions.
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The European Court of First Instance is slated to issue its ruling on Microsoft&#39;s appeal of antitrust penalties Wednesday, a person familiar with the EU&#39;s schedule told internetnews.
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When Europe's second-highest court rules Monday on Microsoft Corp.'s appeal of its landmark antitrust conviction, more will be at stake for regulators than just the behavior of the world's largest software company.
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The Bush administration appealed a court decision Monday that allowed a lawsuit to go forward challenging the president's warrantless domestic spying program.
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A group of state plaintiffs in the U.S. Microsoft antitrust case will ask for a five-year extension of a large portion of the 2002 judgment against the company, the group's lawyer said Tuesday.
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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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The verdict and reaction... Yesterday saw the long-awaited verdict to Microsoft's appeal of European anti-trust action. On all major points Microsoft lost its appeal, although the commission's imposition of a monitoring trustee has been overturned.â¦
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Top lawyers for Microsoft and the European Commission are to learn whether the company has persuaded the court to overturn a record $690 million fine and antitrust ruling.
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(InfoWorld) - A group of state plaintiffs in the U.S. Microsoft antitrust case will ask for a five-year extension of a large portion of the 2002 judgment against the company, the group's lawyer said Tuesday. California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia -- known as the "California group" -- want an extension of most of the middleware portions of the judgment, said Stephen Houck, a lawyer for the group. Microsoft still retains a huge lead in the operating system and Web browser markets, he said. "Microsoft continues to have a stranglehold over the two products ... that nearly all consumers use," Houck said during an antitrust compliance hearing in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. "Very little has happened in five years ... in those markets." The California group of states -- the larger of two groups of states that sued Microsoft for antitrust violations -- will ask for an extension of all the middleware portions of the antitrust judgement, except for a section that governs the royalties Microsoft can charge PC manufacturers for the Windows operating system. Most of the antitrust judgment was scheduled to expire in November. Microsoft lawyer Rick Rule said the company would need time to respond to Houck's proposal. Microsoft first heard of the plan to ask for an extension on Friday, he said, and the California group plans to file a formal extension request with the court in mid-October. Rule seemed to suggest Microsoft would fight the five-year extension. U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly declined to impose a 10-year judgment in 2002, he said. "We think the picture of the computer industry is much rosier," Rule added. "We think it's clear that the decree has done its job." Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans said the company will respond in more detail after it has seen the extension request. "We're a bit surprised that a few states are now requestingÂ an extension of the consent decree because they indicated just last month that they're not too fond of it," Evans said. In August 2006, Microsoft already agreed to an extension of the section of the judgment requiring it to make its communications protocols available to other software vendors. Microsoft's efforts to fix technical documentation for the protocols have run into several delays. Houck on Tuesday asked Kollar-Kotelly to extend the communications protocol section of the judgment until 2012. The California group does not "have any confidence" Microsoft will continue to improve the communications protocol program without oversight, Houck said. An independent auditor's report just issued questions whether Microsoft has released all the protocols mandated in the judgment, he added. The California group's extension proposal comes afterÂ the U.S. Department of Justice and the New York group of states filed briefs last month saying the antitrust judgment has done its job. "There have been a number of developments in the competitive landscape ... that suggest that the Final Judgments are accomplishing their stated goal of fostering competitive conditions among middleware products, unimpeded by anticompetitive exclusionary obstacles erected by Microsoft," said the report from the DOJ and New York group, which includes five states. But Houck disputed that assessment on Tuesday. At the time of the judgment, a handful of PC vendors were preinstalling a competing Web browser on PCs, he said. Today, no major ones are, he said. In addition, the communications protocol program was supposed to be finished early in the judgment's life, and its delays have kept software vendors from fully using the program, Houck said. "The whole thing ... doesn't have an opportunity to work as the court intended," he said. "It's very clear that the product markets at issue in this case have not moved rapidly at all." Kollar-Kotelly said she would delay final reports on the judgment while she considers the California group's request. Microsoft and the plaintiffs were scheduled to meet with her Nov. 6 to discuss the final reports, but she will now consider the extension request on that date. Before Houck made his request, the judge said she was opposed to extending the judgment without a good reason. It was hard to predict the impact the judgment would have, she added. "The final chapter of the final judgment has not been written," Kollar-Kotelly said. The California group wants Kollar-Kotelly to extend all of section 3 of the judgment except for section 3B, dealing with manufacturer royalties. The extended provision would include: *Â A prohibition against Microsoft retaliating against PC vendors for including competing software on PCs; *Â A prohibition against Microsoft restricting PC vendors from putting competing middleware in the start menu or making them defaults; *Â A requirement that Microsoft give APIs for its middleware to PC vendors and independent software vendors.
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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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The European Union Court of First Instance has upheld the US$665.4 million fine on Microsoft imposed by the executive European Commission in March and will now force the company to offer European computer makers a version of the Windows operating system
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Microsoft said Tuesday it has appealed a July fine by the European Commission with the Court of First Instance, the European Union's second highest court. It also called the additional fine unfair, and blasted the EC for being vague.
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Asks the U.S. Court of Appeals to review the FCC's decision to require so-called open-access rules.
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Microsoft Corporation lost a major appeal today in a European court, which 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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A European Union judge will weigh on Friday whether Microsoft should be forced to remove its music and video player from its Windows operating software
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MicrosoftÂ has filed an appeal against the latest antitrust fine imposed on it by the European Commission, a Microsoft spokesman said on Tuesday.