European aircraft manufacturer Airbus has taken issue with part of the European Union’s anti-trust decision against Microsoft and has filed a petition with the court handling the software maker’s appeal.
European aircraft manufacturer Airbus has taken issue with part of the European Union’s anti-trust decision against Microsoft and has filed a petition with the court handling the software maker’s appeal.
“Airbus is seeking a clarification of one of the points raised in the EU decision related to market regulation,” a spokeswoman for the company in France said Friday. She emphasized that Airbus “is not taking sides in the case,” adding that it filed the petition because it was procedure.
Although the spokeswoman declined to elaborate on the petition, a report published in the online edition of The Wall Street Journal on Friday said that Airbus feared that the EU ruling could affect the way it makes planes by thwarting its choice of providers for components such as seats and galleys.
The European Commission earlier this year found Microsoft guilty of improperly using its dominance in PC operating systems to boost its hand in other markets such as that for media players, harming rivals such as RealNetworks in the process. Microsoft is appealing the decision.
As part of the appeal process, interested third parties are allowed to intervene and question points of law, according to Anthony Woolich, an anti-trust attorney with London’s Lawrence Graham LLP.
“It’s very important to get support to show that it’s not just the (appealing) party’s personal commercial interest at stake, that there’s a wider point of principal,” Woolich said.
Microsoft’s efforts to gain intervention from a variety of third parties is of little surprise given the magnitude of the case, Woolich added. Microsoft approached Airbus rival The Boeing Co. and encouraged it to intervene with the European appeals court, the Journal reported.
Representatives for Microsoft in Europe were not immediately available to comment on the case Friday.
In its anti-trust ruling, the Commission ordered Microsoft to pay a €497 million ($606 million) fine and gave it 90 days to begin selling a version of Windows in Europe without its Media Player software. Furthermore, it gave the company 120 days to reveal enough Windows source code to allow rivals to build competing server software that works properly with Windows.
Microsoft filed its official appeal against the decision with the EU’s Court of First Instance (CFI) in June. A spokesman for the court declined to give any details of the Airbus petition on Friday.
Although the Commission’s decision is specific to Microsoft, it creates case law that could have a wider-ranging effect on how companies in a variety of markets deal with competition.
“If Microsoft can gain support from third parties who say that customers are being adversely affected by the decision, that can be very, very compelling,” Woolich said.
The EU decision came after what was widely considered as a slap on the wrist to Microsoft from U.S. anti-trust authorities. Woolich warned, however, that the EU’s anti-trust case is far from over. Appeals to the CFI often take one to two years, and its decisions can be appealed to the European Court of Justice, he said. Appeals to that court often take two to three years, he added.
“Realistically it could be 5 years before this case is settled and the technology would have moved on,” Woolich said.
