EU fines Microsoft 281 mln euros for defiance
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European Union regulators fined  Microsoft  280.5 million euros (&#36;357.3 million) on  Wednesday for defying a 2004 antitrust ruling, and warned the  company to comply or face bigger fines from next month.
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Microsoft has lost its appeal to delay a fine and anti-competitive penalties set by the European Commission.
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InfoWorld - The European Commission has again criticized Microsoft&#39;s response to a 2004 antitrust ruling, opening up the possibility of further fines for the company. The regulator said that the software giant proposes overcharging for vital interoperability information needed by rival software makers to allow their products work properly with the Windows operating system.
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The European Commission warned Microsoft  on Thursday it faced further fines in its long-running antitrust battle with Brussels, this time for seeking unreasonable prices from software makers for vital data.
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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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European competition regulators met on  Monday to discuss the amount of a fine it will impose on  software giant Microsoft  for failing to comply with a  European Commission antitrust decision.
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Microsoft isn't quite begging, but the company is hoping a European court will cut it some major slack in its fight against an antitrust ruling, citing concerns that PC users will get the short end of the stick. -washingtonpost.com
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The European Commission ruled in March that Microsoft had indulged in anti-competitive behaviour with Windows and set a fine of Â£333mn plus orders to produce a version of Windows without the Media Player within 90 days or face further action.
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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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(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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EU criticizes Microsoft interoperability efforts in response to 2004 antitrust ruling, more fines possible.
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Microsoft was dealt a heavy blow yesterday when a senior European judge upheld the anti-trust sanctions imposed on it earlier this year by the European Commission.
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Penalties imposed on Microsoft by the European Union are unlikely to rein in the software giant and could result in higher costs for other software developers, regulators said on Friday.
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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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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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BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Under threat of new multimillion fines, Microsoft Corp. said Thursday that it had signed up its first licensee for a scheme EU regulators told it to set up three years ago to share code that helps servers work with the Windows operating platform.
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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.