14 DAY TRIAL // The European Court of First Instance's judgment, in the European Commission vs. Microsoft, upheld the ruling passed in March 2004 against the Redmond company for abusing its Windows near-monopoly in order to gain an unfair advantage on the digital media player and server work group markets. However, the conclusion delivered at the debut of this week by the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg, had only a superficial impact on Microsoft. The fact of the matter is that the company has been guarded by adverse effects by the three-year buffer that separates the initial ruling of the European Commission from 2004, and the dismissal of most of its appeals in 2007. Microsoft has even already paid the ?497 million ordered by the European Commission due to abuse of a dominant market position.
The main concern that rises from the rejection of Microsoft's appeal by the Court of First instance, is how will the Windows platform - a product central to the antitrust ruling of 2004 - be affected. Well, Windows XP and Windows Vista, at this point in time, fully comply with the EU Commission's 2004 decision. In this aspect, Microsoft is delivering both Windows N, and Windows Vista N operating systems for the European market, basically the versions of the operating systems but stripped of the Windows Media Player. There are no short-time effects that will focus on XP or Vista.
Brad Smith, Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary, Legal & Corporate Affairs, Microsoft revealed that there are no issues associated with either Windows XP or Windows Vista. Smith however did take into consideration the fact that Microsoft could face upcoming issues related to Vista as a direct result of losing most of the appeal, but stated that the company is ready to address them. Currently, Microsoft is undecided how it will address the latest conclusion against it. The company is contemplating either cutting its losses and complying with the 2004 antitrust ruling, or issuing another appeal.
"What this [the judgement of the Court of First Instance] means for future versions of Windows. We'll have time to digest this. We'll have time to have the right kinds of conversations with the European Commission. There may be times in the future when we'll add new features into Windows and need to address them in some different way because of today's decision. I think it's too early to draw that conclusion right now. But I think it's going to require that kind of comprehensive approach to our thinking to really sift through all of this," Smith added as cited by SeattlePI.
Microsoft's Chief Executive Office, Steve Ballmer expressed his disappointment for the lost appeal, and also addressed the matter of how the decision would reverberate to end users. "While we had hoped for a different outcome, it is important to recognize that the Court's judgment should not adversely affect our customers in the short-run. Today's ruling was very clear that we can still offer our full-featured products to our customers. While we do have concerns about how the legal precedents in the Commission's decision and today's ruling will affect innovation and intellectual property, we can still provide our customers with the same products, services and support that we were providing prior to today's decision," Ballmer commented in an email sent to Microsoft employees.