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| EU court upholds antitrust decision against Microsoft |
LUXEMBOURG, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU)'s second-highest court on Monday essentially upheld an antitrust decision against Microsoft by the European Commission (EC) in 2004, keeping the record fine of millions of euros in place.
Dressed in their formal black robes, the 13 judges of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of First Instance (CFI) were all present.
It only took the presiding judge Bo Vesterdorf less than four minutes to read out the main passages of the 248-page written verdict, bringing the nearly decade-old case to a new climax.
"The court considers that the Commission was correct to conclude that the work group server operating systems of Microsoft's competitors must be able to interoperate with Windows domain architecture on an equal footing with Windows operating systems if they are to be capable of being marketed viably," the court said in its verdict.
"The absence of such interoperability has the effect of reinforcing Microsoft's competitive position on the market and creates a risk that competition will be eliminated," it added.
As to the issue of Microsoft's tying of its own Media Player with Windows operating systems, the Luxembourg-based court said it agreed with the EC that "there was a significant risk that the tying would lead to a weakening of competition in such a way that the maintenance of an effective competitive structure would not be ensured in the near future."
Since the abuse of a dominant position was confirmed, the court left the amount of the fine unchanged at 497 million euros (686 million U.S. dollars).
Monday's court ruling dealt a heavy blow to the U.S. software giant, which may exhaust its legal remedies by challenging the case to the European Court of Justice, the EU's highest court also based in Luxembourg.
Speaking outside the courtroom where the ruling was freshly issued, Microsoft lawyer Brad Smith declined comment on whether they would appeal.
"I don't want to talk about what will come next," Smith said. "We need to read the ruling before we make any decision."
While saying "we look forward to complying with today's decision, " Smith denied that meant abandoning their rights to appeal.
The EC wasted no time in welcoming the court's ruling.
"This judgment confirms the objectivity and the credibility of the commission's competition policy. This policy protects the European consumer interest and ensures fair competition between businesses in the internal market," said EC President Jose Manuel Barroso in a statement.
European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said the ruling by the CFI will "give consumers more choice in software markets."
"That decision set an important precedent in terms of the obligations of dominant companies to allow competition, in particular in high tech industries. The court ruling shows that the commission was right to take its decision," she said.
She called on Microsoft to comply fully with its legal obligations to desist from engaging in anti-competitive conduct and vowed that "the commission will do its utmost to ensure that Microsoft complies swiftly."
The nearly decade-old case originated in 1998 when the U.S. software company Sun Microsystems complained to the commission that Microsoft was refusing to supply it with interoperability information necessary for its server software to interoperate with Microsoft's dominant PC operating system, triggering the EU's antitrust investigation, which was later broadened to include Microsoft's tying of its own Media Player product with Windows operating systems.
In its 2004 decision, the commission ordered Microsoft to correct the two types of anti-competitive conducts and fined the company a record fine of 497 million euros, which was later
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