Microsoft Refutes EC Allegations

by Ulrika Lomas, for LawAndTax-News.com, Brussels

17 February 2006

According to a formal response issued by Microsoft this week in its antitrust dispute with the European Commission, the firm has complied fully with the technical documentation requirements imposed by a 2004 European Commission decision, and the Commission has ignored critical evidence in its haste to attack the company’s compliance.

“Hundreds of Microsoft employees and contractors have worked for more than 30,000 hours to create over 12,000 pages of detailed technical documents that are available for license today. In addition Microsoft has offered to provide licensees with 500 hours of technical support and has made its source code related to all the relevant technologies available under a reference license,” the company said in a 75-page response filed Wednesday.

The firm also filed with the Commission two independent expert reports by software system engineering professors who examined the technical documentation created by Microsoft, and concluded that it "meets industry standards, particularly in such a complex domain".

The company’s response also alleges that the Commission ignored key information and denied Microsoft due process in defending itself.

“The Commission waited many months before informing Microsoft that it believed changes were necessary to the technical documents, and then gave Microsoft only a few weeks to make extensive revisions,” Microsoft’s filing stated.

The software giant was earlier this month unsuccessful in its bid to secure a second deadline extension.

In late January, the EC had granted Microsoft a three-week deadline extension in its antitrust case against the software giant.

The EC in December issued a Statement of Objections against Microsoft for its failure to comply with certain of its obligations under the March 2004 Commission decision, which found Microsoft to have infringed the EC Treaty rules on abuse of a dominant position by leveraging its near monopoly in the market for PC operating systems onto the markets for work group server operating systems and for media players.

One of the remedies imposed by the decision was for Microsoft to disclose complete and accurate interface documentation which would allow non-Microsoft work group servers to achieve full interoperability with Windows PCs and servers.

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