Microsoft must still pay an a!860M fine for failing to provide interoperability information to competitors, the General Court of the EU ruled
The General Court of the European Union has rejected Microsoft’s appeal of a 2008 European Commission antitrust ruling, but has reduced the fine Microsoft must pay from €899 million (US$1.1 billion) to €860 million.
The General Court of the European Union has rejected Microsoft’s appeal of a 2008 European Commission antitrust ruling, but has reduced the fine Microsoft must pay from € 899 million (US$1.1 billion) to € 860 million.
The European Commission had imposed the record-breaking fine because of Microsoft’s failure to respect an earlier antitrust ruling that it disclose information about APIs used in its workgroup server products to enable competitors to develop interoperable products.
“The General Court essentially upholds the Commission’s decision imposing a periodic penalty payment on Microsoft for failing to allow its competitors access to interoperability information on reasonable terms,” the court said in a statement.
However, the court did reduce the amount of the penalty by just over 4 percent, to € 860 million, to take account of a 2005 letter that the Commission sent to Microsoft allowing it to continue restrictions on the distribution of some rival ‘open source’ products pending a ruling on an open case.
The Commission said this did not mean that the software giant should not hand over interoperability information, but Microsoft argued at a hearing last year that regulators should have given it more guidance to avoid the fine.
The fine was based on a daily rate for the 488 days that the computer giant failed to hand over the interoperability information and came on top of earlier penalties of a!497 million and € 280.5 million for anti-competitive behavior. Microsoft is the only company to be fined by the European Commission’s antitrust regulators for failing to comply with an order.
In its ruling on Wednesday, the court said that open source developers are among Microsoft’s main competitors and ordered it to pay 80 percent of the costs incurred by Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).
FSFE President Karsten Gerloff said he was pleased with the judgment which “showed we were in the right all along.” However, he said that open source advocates must remain vigilant because the practice of restricting access to essential interoperability information has not gone away.
“It has just become more nuanced,” he said, pointing to recent behavior by Apple and by Google with its Android mobile operating system..
Competition Commissioner JoaquAn Almunia also welcomed the ruling. “Today’s judgement fully vindicates the enforcement action that the Commission took to ensure Microsoft’s compliance with its obligations. The requirement that Microsoft disclose information to its competitors so as to allow interoperability between the dominant Windows architecture and rival work group servers brought significant benefits to users. A range of innovative products that would otherwise not have seen the light of day were introduced on the market,” he said in an official statement.
