Microsoft Appeal Against 899 Million Euro Fine a Long Shot

Microsoft made a new move at the end of the past week designed to take the European Union financial penalties saga one step further. The Redmond company has had a rough ride in the European arena cumulating a total of $2.5 billion worth of fines, but it has not hesitated to raise the stakes in its apparently continuous face-off with the EU Antitrust Commission by lodging an appeal against the latest financial penalty issued on February 27, 2008. The record €899 million fine, approximately, $1.39 billion, imposed by the Commission earlier this year was related to Microsoft's failure to comply with a previous antitrust ruling against it, dating back in 2004.

In this manner, Microsoft became the first company fined for non-compliance with an antitrust decision in the history of the European Community. And the Redmond giant seems yet reluctant to back down from the fight. Case in point, the appeal filed with the European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg, an initiative designed to overturn the February 27, $1.39 billion financial penalty.

"Microsoft today filed to the EU Court of First Instance an application to annul the European Commission decision of February 27", a representative from the Redmond revealed. "We are filing this appeal in a constructive effort to seek clarity from the court." Microsoft declined to make public any additional details about its application to annul the fine.

EU's antitrust regulators took little time to produce a reply to Microsoft's latest legal actions against its ruling. "The Commission is confident that its decision to impose the fine is legally sound", a spokesperson said, refusing to comment any further. The $1.39 billion fine was imposed as a direct consequence of Microsoft charging what the EU Commission referred to as "unreasonable prices" for access to protocol interoperability documentation for Windows servers.

Just ahead of the EU Commission's February fine, Microsoft announced that it embarked on a new path with a strong focus on interoperability and that it was beginning to share its proprietary protocols with competitors under newfound "Interoperability Principles". The Redmond company's "Interoperability Principles" are, in this context, bound to be the strongest argument for the Court of First Instance to annul the $1.39 billion financial penalty, despite the fact that the institution in question has upheld in the past all the fines imposed to Microsoft, siding with the EU Antitrust Commission.


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