As regards interoperability, in its Microsoft judgment of 17 September 2007,
the Court of First Instance confirmed the principles that must be respected by
dominant companies as regards interoperability disclosures. In the complaint by
ECIS, Microsoft is alleged to have illegally refused to disclose
interoperability information across a broad range of products, including
information related to its Office suite, a number of its server products, and
also in relation to the so called .NET Framework. The Commission's
examination will therefore focus on all these areas, including the question
whether Microsoft's new file format Office Open XML, as implemented in Office,
is sufficiently interoperable with competitors' products.
As for the tying of separate software products, in its Microsoft judgment of
17 September 2007, the Court of First Instance confirmed the principles that
must be respected by dominant companies. In a complaint by Opera, a competing
browser vendor, Microsoft is alleged to have engaged in illegal tying of its
Internet Explorer product to its dominant Windows operating system. The
complaint alleges that there is ongoing competitive harm from Microsoft's
practices, in particular in view of new proprietary technologies that Microsoft
has allegedly introduced in its browser that would reduce compatibility with
open internet standards, and therefore hinder competition. In addition,
allegations of tying of other separate software products by Microsoft, including
desktop search and Windows Live have been brought to the Commission's attention.
The Commission's investigation will therefore focus on allegations that a range
of products have been unlawfully tied to sales of Microsoft's dominant operating
system.
Paul Merrell on 17 Jan 09Note the scope of the original complaint now being prosecuted by DG Competition: [i] tying MSIE to Windows; [ii] adding proprietary tehnology to MSIE that conflict with open internet standards; [iiii] tying desktop search and Windows Live, presumably to Vista. Initial press reports of the DG Competition statement of objections mention only the tying of MSIE to Windows issue,. So we do not yet know whether the other complaints are being prosecuted. But perhaps worthy of note, the press's acknowledged source of information iis Microsoft, which has incentives to soft-pedal the scope of the objections. Also note from the press reports that the Comission has not yet announced its position on the ECIS complaint involving Office and OOXML.
