Microsoft won't appeal European antitrust ruling
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Microsoft has decided not to appeal&#160;last month&#39;s appeal ruling&#160;against it from the Court of First Instance (CFI) and has finally&#160;agreed to comply&#160;with the European Commission&#39;s&#160;2004 antitrust ruling&#160;that sparked the company&#39;s appeal.The decision to accept the CFI&#39;s ruling will dispel any lingering uncertainty facing software and hardware developers over how to plan future product development.&quot;We will not appeal the CFI&#39;s decision to the European Court of Justice and will continue to work closely with the Commission and the industry to ensure a flourishing and competitive environment for information technology in Europe and around the world,&quot; the company said in a statement Monday.Last month the Luxembourg-based CFI threw out Microsoft&#39;s appeal, siding with the Commission on the two essential elements in the antitrust case: Microsoft&#39;s failure to share necessary interoperability information about its Windows operating system with rivals and its strategy of tying its media player to Windows to the detriment of rival players.The Commission declined to comment officially on Microsoft&#39;s decision not to appeal.
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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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Microsoft lost on Monday a landmark EU antitrust case at Europe&#39;s second-highest court, which upheld a record 497-million-euro (690-million-dollar) fine imposed by the European Commission in 2004.
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Microsoft has decided not to appeal&#160;last month&#39;s appeal ruling&#160;against it from the Court of First Instance (CFI) and has finally&#160;agreed to comply&#160;with the European Commission&#39;s&#160;2004 antitrust ruling&#160;that sparked the company&#39;s appeal.
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A top European Union judge  challenged the EU executive's reasoning in its antitrust court  battle with Microsoft Corp. on Friday, questioning why it  opposed the U.S. software giant's setting industry standards.
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Microsoft Corp. said on Monday it would not appeal a European Union court order to immediately implement antitrust sanctions, but that it remained optimistic it would eventually prevail in its main case.
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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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US software giant Microsoft on Thursday launched its legal appeal against a stinging EU anti-trust ruling, six months after it was fined nearly half a billion euros for abusing its market dominance.
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Software giant Microsoft MSFT.O 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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A European court dismisses Microsoft's appeal in a long-running dispute about competition.
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Microsoft early this morning dropped its decade-long antitrust battle with European regulators by agreeing not to appeal a landmark Sept. 17 court ruling.
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Microsoft Corp. said on Monday it had  decided not to appeal a December ruling by a European Union  court ordering it to immediately implement EU antitrust  sanctions imposed last March.
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Microsoft Corp.&#39;s settlements with long-time opponents Novell Inc. and the Computer &amp; Communications Industry Association won&#39;t end the software maker&#39;s antitrust woes in Europe.
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(InfoWorld) - 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. Although the date of the ruling by the European Court of First Instance has been public since July, the European commissioner in charge of competition, Neelie Kroes, still hasn't decided whether she will hold a press conference on Monday. Meanwhile, Tom Brookes, a Microsoft spokesman, said the company is waiting until Monday morning before finalizing plans for addressing the rank's journalists from around the world gathering in Luxembourg, the court's location, and Brussels and who are eager to place "winner" and "loser" tags on the adversaries. "How much can you prepare for an outcome you don't know?" Brookes said. "Clearly Mrs. Kroes isn't going to give a press conference if the Commission loses outright," said Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd. Microsoft's appeal against the Commission's 2004 antitrust ruling is the biggest event in the working lives of everyone directly involved. They know that Monday's outcome will influence the software industry's future and will be a reference in all future European antitrust cases, especially ones in the fast-changing world of IT. From Microsoft's perspective, it will determine "under what circumstances market-leading companies can improve their products for consumers," said Erich Andersen, vice president and associate general counsel for Microsoft in Europe, in a statement. "The issue here is whether Microsoft should be able to regulate the market from a superdominant position, or whether the market should determine which products should gain access to consumers," countered Todd in a telephone interview. Both sides also know that how the outcome is perceived in the press is almost as important as the actual outcome, which is likely to be hundreds of pages in length, devilishly nuanced, and highly complex. Most people expect several versions of the court ruling to appear in the media on Monday. Initial reports will emerge shortly after the ruling is made public at 9:30 a.m. local time, and will probably focus on whether the Commission has to repay any or all of the â¬497 million ($685 million) fine it imposed on Microsoft in 2004. Repaying the fine will be seen as evidence that Microsoft's appeal against the 2004 Commission ruling was successful. Letting the fine stand will be viewed as a Microsoft loss. But what happens to the fine is the least important aspect of Monday's ruling, according to Thomas Vinje, a partner in the law firm Clifford Chance, who heads the legal team of the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS), a Commission ally. "It's the least relevant yardstick," Vinje said. "Far more important is how the judges assess individual facts and points of law because this will determine what legal precedents can be gleaned from this case." A senior lawyer on Microsoft's side agreed. "If the court reduces the fine on Microsoft, saying that the anticompetitive behavior isn't so serious, but upholds the Commission's broad argument, then a lawyer in a year's time dealing with a different antitrust case will be more interested in what the court specifically said than in whether the fine was reduced or not," he said, asking not to be named. Journalists will largely be dependent on lawyers' interpretations of the document, which won't come out until some time after the initial ruling. The story may well change dramatically during the day, once details of the ruling emerge, possibly even reversing a superficial initial assessment of who won or lost. The finest legal minds involved on both sides will pore over the document looking for ways to claim victory and to shape perceptions of the ruling. Microsoft appealed both strands in the Commission's landmark 2004 ruling, which concluded that Microsoft was abusing the dominant position of its Windows operating system in order to muscle in on other sectors of the software market. The Commission concluded that Microsoft was competing unfairly against other vendors by bundling its Media Player multimedia software in Windows. The Commission also ruled that Microsoft monopolized the market for low-end server operating systems by failing to reveal interoperability information to rivals. Last April the court held a three-day hearing during which the Commission and Microsoft, together with their software industry allies, tried to convince the judges of their arguments. Observers foresee four possible outcomes on Monday, the first two clear-cut but unlikely, the other two mixed and therefore more probable. The court could side with the Commission on both sides of the case. It might deem Microsoft an obstacle to innovation in the software industry and order the immediate breakup of the company, effectively appropriating the Windows operating system and making it a public utility. In the second clear-cut scenario, the court sides with Microsoft on both counts and declares that the rapidly changing IT industry is defined by a string of monopolies and that one monopoly is inevitably overtaken by another in time. More likely, the court may side with the Commission on the interoperability side but uphold Microsoft's appeal against the bundling ruling. Microsoft may be ordered to release all interoperability information to rivals immediately. This result would open up Office-related markets to open source software rivals. However, Microsoft would no longer need to sell a version of Windows without Media Player, and it would most probably bundle more and more features onto Windows in the future, to the likely detriment of any halfway successful innovation from a rival, such as Google. Alternatively, Microsoft may lose the bundling argument but win on the interoperability side. The Court may order Microsoft to set up a separate company to sell a completely unbundled version of Windows. This entity would be free to compete with the fully bundled version and strike partnerships with other software developers. If the third scenario prevails, then Microsoft could face a string of lawsuits in Europe. The Commission is already examining an ECIS complaint that claims Microsoft has stifled competition in the market for office tools software by failing to allow rival software from interoperating properly with Microsoft Office. "Victory on the interoperability side of the case on Monday would put wind in our sails," said the ECIS's Vinje. But a loss would put a swift end to a new attack, and any others that might lie in waiting for Monday's outcome. "Monday's ruling will have a huge effect on how the ECIS complaint is dealt with," Todd said.
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A European Union court on Wednesday upheld penalties imposed by the EU executive on Microsoft, dismissing the software giant's appeal for a suspension, according to a document obtained by Reuters.
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European Court rejects Microsoft's appeal in historic case. Court sides with European Commission on three significant areas.
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Microsoft Corp. said on Monday it had decided not to appeal a December ruling by a European Union court ordering it to immediately implement EU antitrust sanctions imposed last March.