EC delays Microsoft and Time Warner decision
Published: 16 Aug 2004 16:05 BST
European antitrust regulators have extended a deadline for deciding whether they will seek an in-depth review of Microsoft and Time Warner's joint ownership of digital rights management company ContentGuard.
European Commission regulators will now make a decision by 25 August, said a representative for the European Commission. The deadline was previously Monday.
Microsoft, a longtime investor in ContentGuard, increased its investment and announced in April that Time Warner would join it in acquiring virtually all of the company from Xerox.
Both Microsoft and Time Warner are looking to establish a stronger foothold in the burgeoning market for technology that prevents illegal copying of such content as songs and videos.
Under European antitrust regulations, the commission has one month to either clear a deal or determine that a thorough investigation is needed. The deadline can be extended by an additional two weeks if one of two events occurs: the companies offer remedies to address regulators' antitrust concerns, or one of the European states wants a more extended review.
It's unclear what precipitated the extension of the deadline in the ContentGuard review, but one source noted the second event is less likely in this case, given that both companies are based in the United States.
ContentGuard, which holds a portfolio of digital rights management patents, has previously licensed its technology to industry titans such as Microsoft and Sony. Additionally, standards bodies, such as the Motion Picture Experts Group, have adopted some of these patents.
The company developed such technologies as extensible rights markup language, or XrML.
ContentGuard's portfolio of digital rights management patents was created by Xerox's Palo Alto Research Centre, and Xerox remains a small investor in ContentGuard.
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