Microsoft is licking its wounds today after losing its appeal against a 2004 European Commission antitrust ruling, which found that that the software giant had illegally abused its dominant market position by refusing to share interoperability information that would allow competitors to better develop products compatible with the Microsoft Windows operating system.

On Monday, the European Court of First Instance essentially upheld the commission’s ruling that Microsoft had demonstrated “abusive” market behavior and had maintained an “unfair” competitive advantage over rivals like RealTime by denying them access to information they needed to compete with Windows Media Player on the Windows platform. 

“The absence of such interoperability has the effect of reinforcing Microsoft’s competitive position on the market and creates a risk that competition will be eliminated,” said the judgement.

In its appeal, Microsoft had argued that sharing the information would violate the company’s intellectual property rights, which it said would hamper its ability to innovate, and enable market rivals to clone Microsoft products. These claims were rejected by the court.

However, the court did partially uphold Microsoft’s appeal, against the decision that a trustee be named to monitor Microsoft, who would bear all the associated costs. Microsoft will be allowed to submit its own proposal for a monitoring trustee.

The commission’s 2004 ruling to fine Microsoft 497 million euros, or $613 million US dollars, was upheld by the court.

Microsoft is expected to appeal this latest decision in the European Court of Justice, the highest tribunal in Europe.  






 

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