Microsoft Faces Record Fines and Further Scrutiny from EU

The European Union (EU) has declared that Microsoft Corp (Microsoft) is finally in compliance with its landmark 2004 antitrust ruling, but has fined Microsoft €833 million for its conduct prior to October 2007. One aspect of the original decision required Microsoft to charge reasonable royalty rates to software developers who wish to develop software that uses aspects of the Microsoft Windows operating system. The EU had ruled that the rates that Microsoft charged prior to October 2007 were prohibitively high, and were designed to limit or prevent independent developers from developing software for Windows. Microsoft had been resisting the decision, but has since acquiesced and has changed the way it licenses its software and patents in order to comply. The company is also facing further scrutiny for other practices. In particular, regulators are investigating Microsoft's participation in the Office Open XML standardization process, in which Microsoft has allegedly improperly influenced the standard. Also, there are allegations that the manner in which Internet Explorer 7 ties into the operating system has excluded other independent browsers, such as Opera. Finally, Microsoft is already developing the next version of its operating system, currently called Windows 7. The EU has said that it will closely monitor the development of this operating system as well. For a range of news coverage, visit: http://tinyurl.com/yr8y9p; and http://tinyurl.com/25kllc Summary by: James Kosa