EC threatens Microsoft
p2pnet.net News:- A European Commission competition spokesman says if Microsoft doesn’t soon comply with the European anti-trust ruling, it may fine the monopoly a significant sum of money.
"Our patience is in terms of weeks rather than months," ZDNet UK quotes the spokesman as saying. "They’ve had over a year now. Microsoft knows that if they don’t comply to our satisfaction we can fine them up to five percent of their [daily global] turnover every day."
The EC rejected Microsoft’s proposed solution to the server interoperability in March this year, “due to four concerns,” says the story, going on:
“One of its main objections was the high level of royalties that Microsoft had proposed, said the spokesman. ‘The level of royalties should reflect the degree of innovation in the product, rather than [Microsoft's] monopoly power,’ said the spokesman.”
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See:-
ZDNet UK – EC demands Microsoft compliance ‘within weeks’, May 11, 2005
May 12th, 2005 at 6:04 pm
This is more European Union silliness. Their problem is common with many competition/anti-trust bureaus unable to deal with the problems that Microsoft is exposing to them, only mask the symptoms. The problem isn’t Microsoft or anything they are doing wrong, but bad government policy which Microsoft is just quite legitimately exploiting.
In Europe they have a 1991 directive on computer software that quite appropriately did not not offer any monopolies on “interfaces”. In this directive they explained their policy justification for doing so.
Unfortunately software patents which the EU is being pressured to adopt (Primarily by IBM, BSA and the United States) and anti-circumvention laws (1996 WIPO treaties) have the opposite effect.
Council Directive 91/250/EEC of 14 May 1991 on the legal protection of computer programs
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/lex/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31991L0250:EN:HTML
The “royalties” that Microsoft is demanding is royalties on software patents, the most controvercial area in patent law.
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/taxonomy/page/or/360
As soon as there is a requirement to “count copies” for any purpose, it doesn’t matter what the value of the royalty is — Free/Libre and Open Source Software (Microsoft’s major competitor) categorically excluded from implementing the interface.
The only way to solve this problem is to have all governments adopt the type of thinking that was seen in the 1991 directive and offer *NO* exclusive rights on computing interfaces: no software patents on interfaces, no copyright on interfaces, and no anti-circumvention laws.
As the 1991 directive said:
“Whereas the Community is fully committed to the promotion of international standardization;”
Where did the EU lose its way since 1991 and create the problem that Microsoft is now only guilty of legitimately exploiting?
May 12th, 2005 at 7:19 pm
The EU is taking a hardline stance to Microsoft, something which the Dept. of Justice manifestly failed to do when it looked into anti-competitive practices at Microsoft in the US.
Sure, its approach isn’t a total remedy to Microsoft’s flagrant abuse of its monopoly, but it’s a good start. The EU should be encouraged and applauded for attempting to bring MS to book.