Antitrust Law
Microsoft European Fine Upheld
Posted Sep 17, 2007, 05:21 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Europe’s second highest court has affirmed a 2004 European Commission finding that Microsoft violated antitrust law.
The European Court of First Instance upheld a $689.4 million fine, saying the software maker had abused its dominant market position, the New York Times reports.
The Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) reports that the ruling "moves Europe's antitrust jurisprudence further away from that of the U.S., where regulators are less apt to view aggressive conduct by dominant companies as abusive."
Microsoft has indicated in the past that it would appeal an adverse ruling, but general counsel Brad Smith did not say how the company would proceed after the decision today. “We will study this decision carefully and if there are additional steps that we need to take, we will take them,” he said.
The case began in 1998 with a complaint by Sun Microsystems that Microsoft had failed to disclose protocols needed by competitors to make their computers work with Microsoft products. The probe later expanded to include a complaint that Microsoft bundled its Windows Media Player into its Windows operating system.