Press Release: Competition: Commission appoints Trustee to advise on Microsoft’s compliance with 2004 Decision

The European Commission on 5 October 2005 appointed Professor Neil Barrett, a computer scientist, as the Trustee who was to provide technical advice to the Commission on issues relating to Microsoft's compliance with the Commission's 2004 Decision of March 2004. The Commission had then decided that Microsoft Corporation had broken the EC Treaty's ban on abuse of monopoly power (Article 82) 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. The Commission's Decision had imposed a fine of €497 million on Microsoft and required the company to implement remedies as regards both work group server operating systems and media players. Trustee Professor Barrett was to begin his mandate immediately.

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