Out-Law News 1 min. read
European Commission says Microsoft must do more to avoid fines
13 Mar 2006, 11:26 am
The European Commission has warned Microsoft that interoperability documents provided by the company in order to comply with an antitrust ruling are inaccurate and incomplete, and that the company is still facing daily fines of up to €2 million.
In December the Commission sent a Statement of Objections to Microsoft, warning that the company was in breach of the March 2004 ruling that Microsoft had broken EU competition law. Microsoft was required, among other things, to publish some interfaces, so that competitors could make their products interoperable with Windows.
Microsoft has been slow to produce what the Commission sees as adequate interoperability information, and the Commission has indicated that it will impose fines if the information is not forthcoming.
The Statement of Objections gave the software giant until 25th January, then extended to 15th February, to supply "adequate information about its server programs". Microsoft met the deadline, but has since accused the Commission of ignoring critical evidence, withholding documents and colluding with its competitors.
The documents supplied by Microsoft on 15th February have now been examined by the Monitoring Trustee, a computer science expert appointed by the Commission to provide technical advice on the interoperability issues, and TAEUS Europe Ltd, an intellectual property engineering firm recruited by the Commission as expert advisors.
In a letter sent by the Commission on Friday, Microsoft was told that both the Trustee and TAEUS found the documentation to be inadequate.
The Monitoring Trustee found that although it was improved slightly, “nothing substantial was added to the Technical Documentation” compared to the previous version, and that the material continued to be incomplete, inaccurate and unusable.
TAEUS, meanwhile, found various parts of the documentation to be “entirely inadequate”, “devoted to obsolete functionality” and “self-contradictory”. It concluded that Microsoft’s documentation was written “primarily to maximise volume (page count) while minimising useful information.”
Microsoft has requested an Oral Hearing, scheduled for 30th and 31st March, after which the Commission will decide whether to impose the fines.
