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Microsoft accused of non-compliance with antitrust order

The European Commission said on Thursday the results of its market testing showed Microsoft Corp had not implemented the remedy demanded by the EU for the company's abuse of its dominant position in the server market.

A commission spokesman for competition told AFX News, the financial news subsidiary of AFP: "The outcome of the market testing is that Microsoft is not implementing the remedy on interoperability."

Microsoft, the world's leading software maker, was ordered by the EU in March last year to disclose information to its rivals in order that their servers could interoperate with Microsoft servers.

The US company appealed against the immediate implementation of that, pending an appeal of the ruling itself, but was ordered in December by the EU high court to implement it immediately.

The commission has since then engaged in market testing -- talking to other players in the industry -- to determine if the way Microsoft was disclosing the information was in compliance with the ruling.

Microsoft released details on its Web site, telling its rivals how to get licences for the information.

The spokesman said: "The real problems are with access to technical documentation to evaluate whether or not it is worthwhile to take out a licence."

He added that, furthermore, rival server operators have to take out a licence for all of the information regardless of their needs.

"This means you have to pay for things you don't necessarily need," he said.

Microsoft told AFX News that it was "fully committed" to implementing the remedy and pointed out that it had informed the commission of the way it planned to do this last year.

"We initially gave the commission our licensing proposal in May of last year and additional detailed information last autumn and have been waiting for feedback since. We finally received that feedback today," Microsoft said.

A spokesman for Microsoft added: "We will work through the issues raised with the commission over the coming days."

Microsoft was found guilty last March of abusing its dominant position in the low-end server market by refusing to disclose the information that would allow rival servers to interoperate.

These rivals could not compete adequately with Microsoft's "ubiquitous" position on the market, the EU executive branch had said.

Commentators often refer to the interoperability information as Microsoft's "crown jewels."
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