Microsoft warned of more EU fines

The European Commission has sent a Statement of Objections (SO) to Microsoft for failing to comply with certain of its obligations under the March 2004 Commission decision (see IP/04/382). Part of that decision found Microsoft to have infringed the EC Treaty rules on abuse of a dominant position (Article 82) by leveraging its near monopoly in the market for PC operating systems onto the market for work group server operating systems. Microsoft therefore had to disclose complete and accurate interface documentation on "reasonable and non-discriminatory terms", allowing non-Microsoft work group servers to interoperate with Windows PCs and servers. The SO indicates the Commission’s preliminary view that there is no significant innovation in the interoperability information, rejecting as unfounded 1500 pages of submissions by Microsoft from December 2005 onwards, and hence that the prices proposed by Microsoft are unreasonable. Microsoft has four weeks to reply to the SO, after which the Commission may impose a daily penalty for failure to comply with the March 2004 decision. The issue of whether the interoperability information is complete and accurate is still under consideration by the Commission.

European Commission: Press Release: IP/07/269: Competition: Commission warns Microsoft of further penalties over unreasonable pricing as interoperability information lacks significant innovation http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/07/269&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

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