This is just what Microsoft doesn't want to hear, especially right after it announced that Windows 2000 was finally going to be ready: a European court says the European Commission wrongly dismissed a French software wholesaler's complaint against the Redmond, Washington software emperors. And that could open up a new antitrust battle for Microsoft, barely a month after a U.S. federal judge found it to be a predatory monopoly.
The European Union's Court of First Instance ruled Thursday that the EC failed to consider Micro Leader Business's charges that Microsoft "abused its dominant position" by blocking the French software maker from buying lower-cost software in Canada for French resale, says Reuters. That ruling could resurrect a European investigation into whether Microsoft is guilty of practices similar to those which the U.S. Justice Department is now mulling, following Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's finding that the company is a predatory monopoly.
Reuters says the European action could actually add some dimension to the U.S. case against the software giant.
In a 1996 complaint to the EU Commission, Micro Leader charged Microsoft with violating EU antitrust rules when it stopped Micro Leader from reselling French-language software and thus entering direct competition with Microsoft and its official French subsidiary. The Commission dismissed that complaint two years later, Reuters says, saying software programs are protected by trademark rights and there was no evidence Microsoft was colluding with distributors to fix resale prices by banning the cheap imports.
"Given its obligations ... [the Commission] should at least have verified if the elements raised by the plaintiff ... in this case imply the existence of a violation [of abuse of dominant position]," the court said in a statement obtained by Reuters. The Commission has two months to appeal to the European Court of Justice, the EU's highest court, Reuters says.
