Microsoft Stalls on Sharing, EU Says

The European Union threatened Microsoft Corp. on Friday with new fines if the software company did not make it easier for competitors to see the blueprints of its server software and less expensive for them to use it.

After hearing from Microsoft’s rivals, the EU’s antitrust office found that the system the company had set up to improve the interoperability between its Windows server and other software companies was insufficient.

“Based on the market tests, it doesn’t seem to be working at all,” said Jonathan Todd, spokesman for the EU’s antitrust office.

EU antitrust regulators fined Microsoft a record $665 million when they ruled last March that Microsoft abusively wielded its Windows software monopoly and locked competitors out of the market.

They ordered remedies to give rivals better access to Windows technological information, and they now say Microsoft is stalling.

Todd said competitors were having difficulty getting access to the technical information needed to make a judgment on whether to buy a license for the Windows interoperability.

Microsoft also forced its rivals to buy the full license package, he said, and it did not allow companies to pick and choose what they needed.

Todd said the European Commission also believed that the cost for the license was excessive.

Furthermore, he said, open-source vendors such as Linux were excluded from the process.

Todd said the EU could impose prohibitive fines of as much as 5% of the company’s annual global sales if it refused to cooperate better.

“The Commission remains patient but there are limits to the patience we are prepared to show,” he said. “The ball is now in Microsoft’s court and I am sure they will come back to us shortly on these issues.”

Microsoft has always said it was doing its utmost to comply with the EU ruling.

Spokesman Jim Desler confirmed that Microsoft had received feedback from the European Commission about its plans for licensing certain software blueprints. But he would not say what specific changes regulators had asked for.