New Microsoft Complaint Filed With EC

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

24 February 2006

A lobbying group of technology firms has filed a new complaint with the European Commission regarding alleged anti-competitive practices employed by Microsoft.

Earlier this month, Microsoft issued a formal response in its antitrust dispute with the European Commission, stating that the firm has complied fully with the technical documentation requirements imposed by a 2004 European Commission decision, and arguing that 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 last 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 alleged 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 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.

However, in the complaint filed this week, the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, which represents technology giants such as IBM, Sun, Nokia, Oracle and RealNetworks, urged the Commission to take further action against Microsoft, arguing that the firm refuses to provide its competitors with access to information relating to various of its file formats, or to use the OpenDocument standard.

"ECIS deeply regrets that strong antitrust law enforcement appears to be the only way to stop the sustained anticompetitive behaviour of Microsoft," ECIS chairman, Simon Awde observed in a statement.

Microsoft, according to reports in the European media, was unphased by this new threat, accusing its rivals of seeking to create a business advantage for themselves using the regulatory system.

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