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EU hits Microsoft with 280.5 million euro antitrust fine

The EU fined Microsoft Corp 280.5 million euros (US$357 million) yesterday for failing to obey its 2004 antitrust order to share program code with rivals and threatened new fines of 3 million euro a day beginning July 31.

The new fines would take effect unless the company supplies "complete and accurate" technical information to developers to help them make software that works smoothly with its ubiquitous Windows operating system.

"I regret that, more than two years after the decision ... Microsoft has still not put an end to its illegal conduct," said EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes. "I have no alternative but to levy penalty payments for this continued compliance. No company is above the law."

The EU imposed daily fines of 1.5 million euros from Dec. 15 to June 20 when it decided that Microsoft was still violating EU law -- below a maximum of 2 million euros a day.

Rejecting Microsoft's claims that the EU's demands were vague and shifting, the EU said the obligations were specific and have not changed.

"It is for Microsoft to produce usable documentation," it said.

Kroes said she was sending a message to all businesses operating in the EU that they must follow EU law.

Microsoft said it only fully understood what it needed to do after talks with the monitor this spring that agreed on a work project. The company said it has a team of 300 people working full-time on a framework to supply the information. Six of seven installments have already been delivered, it said, and another is due next Tuesday.

Additional fines at this stage would be "unjustified and unnecessary," it said before the verdict.

Kroes was unrepentant.

"I sincerely hope that the latest technical documentation being delivered by Microsoft will bring them into compliance and that further penalty payments will not prove necessary," she said.
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