Compliance Toolkit

Microsoft makes last-ditch effort to appease EC

Ingrid Marson ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 01 Jun 2005 13:15 BST

Microsoft has filed its latest attempt to comply with last year's EC anti-trust ruling mere hours before the deadline set by European authorities

A European Commission spokeswoman told ZDNet UK on Wednesday that Microsoft met Tuesday's deadline for submissions, but European authorities need to examine Microsoft's proposal to see if the company has complied fully with the conditions laid out in the original antitrust ruling.

"We were in contact with Microsoft until late in the evening yesterday and will now carefully analyse what's on the table to assess whether or not they have complied with the March 2004 [antitrust] decision," she said.

If the EC finds that Microsoft has failed to comply, the software giant could face fines of up to $5m (£3m) daily.

The EC spokeswoman was unwilling to provide details of Microsoft's final proposal and refused to state how long it would take to make a final decision. "It will take as long as it takes," she said.

Microsoft was also unwilling to comment on its final proposal, but confirmed that it had completed its submission. "We have submitted proposals to the commission and now await their response," said a Microsoft spokesman.

The original antitrust ruling on March 24, 2004, demanded that Microsoft disclose information to rival makers of server software to enable their products to be interoperable with Windows and that it offer a version of Windows without Media Player.

The EC rejected Microsoft's proposed server interoperability licence in March this year. Although Microsoft announced in April that they had addressed the majority of the EC's concern in this area, the EC said a few weeks ago that there were still issues to be resolved regarding both the server interoperability remedy and the version of Windows without Media Player.