Microsoft, EU Argue Over Compliance
Microsoft's battle against the European Commission has moved forward on two fronts. The company was denied the right to force its rivals to reveal communications with the EU Wednesday, and a hearing on whether Microsoft has complied with a 2004 antitrust ruling began Thursday.
On Wednesday, a California judge refused to force Sun and Oracle to provide internal documents that would assist the company's case. U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia Trumbull said in her decision that as a matter of courtesy, she would not interfere with the legal proceedings of a foreign court.
Microsoft attempted to use U.S. courts as a way to obtain the documents after its initial request was denied by the EU Commission. The documents that the company was interested in were copies of communications between Microsoft's rivals and the the antitrust watchdog in Europe.
Judges in New York and Boston are still considering similar requests by Microsoft regarding IBM and Novell, however it's fairly likely that those requests would be denied as well.
The documents would have been used to support Microsoft in its two-day compliance hearing, which will determine if the company must pay a 2 million euro daily fine dating back to December 15, 2005. This means the company could owe several hundred million euros in fines when a decision is handed down next week.
December 15 had been chosen because that is the deadline by which Microsoft was supposed to have complied with the Commission's decision and applied all remedies.
As the proceedings opened Thursday, the Commission accused the Redmond company of turning the case into a "media exercise."
Microsoft's frequent statements and comments regarding the case, as well as the hearing itself, were only to distract from the facts itself in an attempt to win in the court of pubic opinion, Commission lawyers say. Microsoft had also attempted to open the hearing to the public, something the agency's rules prohibit.
For its part, Microsoft says it is willing to do more to appease the EU, but asked for clearer instructions and said fines were not the answer.