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Microsoft Rebuts the EU Over Its Antitrust Ruling

Posted on: Thursday, 16 February 2006, 12:00 CST

By Paul Meller

With the threat of daily fines of as much as 2 million hanging over it, Microsoft replied to the European Commission's latest accusation on Wednesday that the company had failed to comply with an antitrust ruling issued in March 2004.

Almost two years have passed since the commission declared that Microsoft was abusing its near-monopoly in computer operating system software, ordered the company to change its business practices in Europe and imposed a fine of 497 million, or $592 million, for using the might of Windows to muscle in on other sectors of the software market, like that for computer server software.

Microsoft's response, 75 pages and submitted hours before a deadline of midnight Wednesday, contains a stinging rebuke of the way the commission, Europe's top antitrust authority, has handled the issue of compliance.

"The commission repeatedly refused to clearly define its requirements and concerns, despite repeated requests and accommodations by Microsoft," the company said in a statement Wednesday. "The company's response documents numerous ways in which the commission had ignored key information and denied Microsoft due process in defending itself."

The commission said in its own statement that it would consider carefully the response that Microsoft had filed.

The executive body's latest accusation against the company, which was sent to Microsoft just before Christmas, "indicated the commission's preliminary view that Microsoft had not yet provided complete and accurate specifications of the interoperability information which it is obliged to disclose."

Microsoft says it met a mid-December deadline for filing technical documents that answer remaining questions the commission had about company compliance with the ruling.

But the commission says it did not receive the documents until after it issued its latest accusation, on Dec. 21. "This documentation was actually supplied on Dec. 26," it said.

Microsoft insists that it has complied with the 2004 ruling, which among other things ordered the company to disclose technical details about Windows that would allow rivals to produce server software that would work as well with Windows as Microsoft's own software.

However, an independent monitor approved by Microsoft, whose job it is to oversee the company's compliance with the ruling, found that the documents provided by Microsoft last autumn fell far short of what the commission's 2004 ruling required.

The monitor, a computer science professor, Neil Barrett, told the commission that he could not use Microsoft's instructions for making software.

Microsoft has requested a hearing to discuss the latest accusations with commission antitrust officials and representatives of rival software companies. The hearing is likely to occur in the next two to three weeks, the commission said.

After the hearing, the commission will consult national antitrust regulators from the 25 members of the European Union. At that point, if it still finds that Microsoft has not complied with the 2004 ruling, it will issue another negative ruling against the company, backdating daily fines to Dec. 15, when Microsoft was supposed to have submitted all the necessary information.

Source: International Herald Tribune

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