Microsoft finally threw in the towel, on October 22nd, in its fight with the European Commission, bringing to an end a nearly decade-long struggle between the EU antitrust regulator and the world’s largest software company. Following its defeat last month in the EU Court of First Instance (CFI), Microsoft says that it will not appeal, and will now allow open-source developers to access information required for interoperability of their software with Microsoft systems. Although in practice much will depend on how a settlement is implemented, the victory marks a major victory for the Commission which at times had seemed as if it had taken on too large an opponent.
The case stems from a complaint filed in December 1998 by Sun Microsystems, a rival US software maker. In 2001-03 the Commission dispatched no less than three statements of objections, culminating in its March 2004 decision imposing a fine of 497m (US$ 694m) and imposing tough remedies on Microsoft. (In July 2006 it slapped the company with a further 281m fine for failing to comply with the decision, with the threat of more to come.)
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