Brad Smith, a Microsoft regulatory lawyer, is reported by WSJ.com as saying that an order amounting to forced licensing, “would dramatically reduce the incentive to innovate and reduce competition over the medium to long term.”
The Commission's proceedings follow complaints by Sun Microsystems and other rivals that claim Microsoft’s dominance in the operating system market obliges it to share information with competitors without discrimination. Sun claims that Microsoft has applied a policy of discriminatory licensing by distinguishing between its competitors according to a so-called "friend-enemy" scheme.
Sun argues that the EU’s 1991 Software Directive does not go far enough. The Directive provides that, under certain circumstances, software engineers can effectively reverse engineer the software of others to see how it works to achieve compatibility.