Europe Rejects Microsoft's Bid to Preserve Bundling Plan
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A court's order is the first time since antitrust challenges to Microsoft began that the company will be forced to alter its strategy of bundling software.
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They are asking the European Union Council to reject this proposal. They claim that software patent directive would be harmful to the European economy.
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The EU executive commission rejected what it said had been a suggestion from US software giant Microsoft that it was delaying the launch of Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system in Europe.
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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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Computer giant Microsoft will not appeal against an EU order forcing it to provide a stripped-down version of its Windows operating system.
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Microsoft says it will comply with sanctions imposed by the European Commission and upheld by the Court of First Instance. The EU says the software company must offer an unbundled version of Windows without Windows Media Player.
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BRUSSELS -- The European Commission has issued a formal set of objections to Microsoft Corp. and Time Warner Inc. taking control of ContentGuard Holdings Inc., a digital rights management (DRM) company, according to sources familiar with the case.
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A European court dismisses Microsoft's appeal in a long-running dispute about competition.
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Microsoft Corp. must sell a version of Windows software without a music and video player and license proprietary information to competitors after a European Union court rejected the company&#39;s bid to suspend an antitrust order.
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The European Union&#39;s Court of First Instance has rejected Microsoft&#39;s appeal of the European Commission&#39;s 2004 landmark antitrust decision against the company, which concluded that the software giant had abused its dominant position in the computer industry &quot;by leveraging its near monopoly in the market for PC operating systems.&quot;
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A European court dealt Microsoft Corp. a severe blow Monday as it rejected the company's appeal of a landmark 2004 antitrust ruling and upheld a $613 million fine against the world's largest software maker.
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(InfoWorld) - No one used the 'L' word, but both sides in the Microsoft Corp. antitrust battle in Europe accused each other of lying about basic facts surrounding the latest twist in the long-running saga that emerged Thursday. The European Commission sent Microsoft a so-called statement of objections Thursday accusing the software vendor of failing to provide interoperability information on "reasonable and non-discriminatory terms." This was a requirement laid out in the landmark 2004 antitrust ruling against the company. In its statement the Commission said the software giant proposes overcharging for vital interoperability information needed by software makers to allow their products to work properly with the Windows operating system. It dismissed almost all of the information Microsoft proposed revealing as not innovative and therefore not worth the price the company wants to charge to license it. Competition commissioner Neelie Kroes said Microsoft had agreed that the innovativeness of the information should be the main criterion when setting the price, but in a conference call with journalists later Thursday, Microsoft top lawyer Brad Smith denied his company had agreed innovativeness should be the main criterion. "We told the Commission we believe innovation is one of three main elements. We don't have the same interpretation of what had been established [between Microsoft and the Commission]," he said. Then ECIS, the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, accused Microsoft of misleading journalists by citing a study by accountants Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), which, according to the software company, shows that the prices Microsoft wants to charge for licenses to the interoperability information are 30 percent below normal market rates. "It is an outrageous comparison," said Thomas Vinje, ECIS's legal advisor and a partner in the Brussels office of law firm Clifford Chance. "The PWC study compares the prices Microsoft wants to charge with the market price for much more valuable information such as software code, documentation, and full redistribution rights," he said. "What people will get with Microsoft's interoperability information is a lot less valuable. To compare it with the sort of information in the PWC study is like comparing apples with... some withered fruit," he added. The actual prices Microsoft wants to charge for licensing out the interoperability information are too complicated to share with journalists, Microsoft spokesman Tom Brookes said. He warned inquisitive journalists that there is no simple price list. The Commission believes that if all software vendors bought licenses it would amount to around 35 percent of the net profit of the industry. Microsoft's Smith dismissed this, saying: "I don't think you can conclude that." He said that if all vendors bought the licenses the total revenue Microsoft would earn would total around US$30 million -- a tiny fraction of annual software industry profits. "That $30 million figure bears no resemblance to reality, and if Microsoft can't explain how they reached this figure it has absolutely no value," Vinje said. Microsoft has four weeks to respond toÂ the latest statement of objections, after which it faces daily fines of up to â¬3 million (US$3.9 million). In the meantime, the Commission is expected to conclude its assessment of the substance of the interoperability information Microsoft submitted. It doesn't have to be innovative. In fact Microsoft's rivals, including ECIS, argue that much of the information competitors need in order to build their software so that it interoperates with the ubiquitous Windows OS on PCs is quite straightforward. Nevertheless, if it isn't revealed then rivals are stuck, Vinje said. Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd told journalists Thursday that Microsoft's continued failure to comply with the antitrust ruling is unprecedented. "In the 50 years of European antitrust policy, it's the first time we've been confronted with a company that has failed to comply with an antitrust decision," he said. "You have to look at their attitude faced with other antitrust authorities in other jurisdictions. This is a company that apparently does not like to have to conform with antitrust decisions," Todd added.
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Aircraft maker Airbus (EAD.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) insisted on Thursday it had no intention of taking sides in a Microsoft (MSFT.
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Loses appeal but can ditch trustee oversight Microsoft has lost its appeal against European Commission charges of anti-competitive behaviour.â¦
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The European commission has turned down the latest appeal from Microsoft for urgent talks on a negotiated settlement in their six-year battle over the software group&#39;s dominance of the market.
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Europe's latest shot across Microsoft's bow shouldn't faze investors.
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Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) says it will obey any directives issued by the European Union  over the modification of Windows. European regulators have ordered the  world's biggest software maker to offer a version of its operating  system without its media player.