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EU Ruling on Microsoft's Appeal Due in September
Published: July 18, 2007
by Alex Woodie
A European Union court on September 17 will hand down its ruling on Microsoft's appeal of the European Commission's initial antitrust ruling in 2004, the court announced yesterday.
Microsoft and the EC have been at loggerheads since the EC's landmark March 2004 ruling that found Microsoft was hurting its competitors by not providing easy access to the server protocols that its competitors need to write Windows-based, client-server applications, and also by bundling the Windows Media Player with the operating system.
As part of its remediation, the group ordered Microsoft to provide access to the protocols and supporting information, and also to sell a version of Windows in Europe that doesn't include the media player--steps that the two sides have often bickered about, and which separately are winding their way through Europe's court system.
The EC fined Microsoft $613 million as part of its initial ruling in 2004, and then fined it another $357 million a year ago because it said the software giant had continued to fail to comply with its 2004 ruling.
Microsoft filed its appeal of the EC's initial finding in June 2004. The Court of First Instance, the second-highest court in the European Union, will decide whether Microsoft's appeal has a legal leg to stand on. Both Microsoft and the EC could appeal the Court of First Instance's ruling to the European Court of Justice, the highest court in the EU.
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