14 DAY TRIAL // In Brussels, a European Commission spokesman said on Monday that Microsoft wants more time to reply to a proposal that it should pay fines of up to 2 million euros daily for failing to carry out antitrust sanctions. The fines were given by the European Commission in December with the deadline for Microsoft's reply set to Wednesday.
Jonathan Todd, a Commission spokesman said, "They have made a request, which is currently under consideration, and we will make a decision before the 25th." He also added that hearing officer Karen Williams will make the decision. There has been no immediate comment from a Microsoft spokesman.
The initial fine was imposed by the Commission in March 2004. The 407 million euro fine required Microsoft to present a version of Windows without audiovisual software, because it had competed unfairly against rivals. Along with this deal, Microsoft was supposed to offer protocols to its rivals.
The Commission went as far as saying that Microsoft hadn't supplied adequate documentation for the protocols and was charging too much for them. The Commission is now looking over at the software giants explanations over the charges. The candidate who claims that there are problems with the documentation is a special trustee who was selected by the Commission from candidates nominated by Microsoft itself.
Professor Neil Barrett, in a statement the Commission released last month said "The documentation appears to be fundamentally flawed in its conception, and in its level of explanation and detail "Any programmer or programming team seeking to use the Technical Documentation ... would be wholly and completely unable to proceed."
Some might even go as far as saying that Microsoft is unwilling to divulge its protocols to its rivals, but why would they ever want to do that?