Microsoft hit with $11.9m price-fixing fine

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 8 Apr 2009 at 17:52

Microsoft has been fined $11.9 million by Germany's competition watchdog for fixing the price of Office Home and Student 2007 with retailers.

The fine was imposed by Germany's BundesKartellamt, an office of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology.

The agency claims Microsoft employees met with those of a national stationary retailer on two occasions to decide the price of the software suite. These discussions were followed by an advertising campaign for the software in October, funded by Microsoft.

German law allows companies to discuss the pricing of products with retailers, but "this must not lead to a form of coordination where the supplier actively tries to coordinate the pricing activities of the retailer and thus retailer and supplier agree on future actions of the retailer," says the agency. "In the present case, this boundary has been crossed."

Responding to the findings, Microsoft says it disagrees with the verdict but will accept the fine in order to curtail any protracted legal battle.

This would seem to be wise given that the company is also staring at a legal battle with the EU over its bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows.