Microsoft has been fined $1.35 billion by the European Union for failing to comply with sanctions. Believe it or not, this is a record fine, and one that the European Union and Microsoft are taking seriously. After all, anytime that a company is fined in excess of one billion dollars it is sure to be big news.
Although this news is moving into the public eye once again, it stems from a 2004 ruling. Generally speaking, Microsoft is being fined because they neglected to share information with its competition on how to interoperate with its many software applications.
Once the court ordered that Microsoft share this information, they did comply. With that being said, the company charged royalty rates to those who accessed the information. While there is nothing wrong with this, the court agreed that the royalty rates were entirely too high.
Neelie Kroes, the European Union Competition Commissioner said, “Microsoft was the first company in 50 years of EU competition policy that the Commission has had to fine for failure to comply with an antitrust decision. I hope that today’s decision closes a dark chapter in Microsoft’s record of non-compliance with the Commission’s March 2004 decision.” As you can see, Microsoft is treading in unfamiliar territory. They are the first company to get hit with this type of fine, and hopefully they will be the last.
In 2004, Microsoft was fined more than $600 million for using its position in the market in an abusive manner. Additionally, the company was told at this time to supply the appropriate documentation to third parties such as developers and key rivals. Unfortunately, by July of 2006 Microsoft had yet to comply, and they were slapped with another fine; this time of $417.9 million.
Microsoft is not doing itself any favors by acting in this manner. While industry experts thought that they would learn their lesson in 2004, this did not happen. Perhaps this fine, weighing in at more than $1 billion, will make Microsoft realize that they are not above the law.
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Comments
Nick said on February 27th at 01:23 pm,
Microsoft getting hefty fines is not a news these days, as it has become a regular feature for them to being levied huge sums of money as fines due to their various instances of infringing laws. But this fine is really big and microsoft is going to be hit in a big way this time, at least they realize and change!
symonds said on February 29th at 08:48 am,
Oh so they big bully has been actually hit below the belt.
Hope they learn something from this and end their ‘monopoly’ business