Microsoft's antitrust efforts slammed

By Simon Aughton

Posted on 13 Mar 2006 at 17:06

The European Commission has sent a new letter to Microsoft explaining that the software company is still failing to comply with its March 2004 antitrust ruling.

In particular the Commission draws attention to a report by the Monitoring Trustee professor Neil Barrett regarding Microsoft's obligation, under the terms of the 2004 settlement, to disclose complete and accurate interface documentation which would allow non-Microsoft work group servers to achieve full interoperability with Windows PCs and servers.

Professor Barrett, who is responsible for providing technical advice to the Commission on issues relating to Microsoft's compliance, said that despite revising its interoperability guidelines they still fall short of the what is required.

'The Monitoring Trustee notes that although it was improved slightly, "nothing substantial was added to the Technical Documentation" compared to the previous version, and that the material continues to be incomplete, inaccurate and unusable,' the Commission said in a statement. 'The improvements required to the documentation are not merely refinements or improvements to the text: the documentation as it stands is unusable.'

The Commission has also sent Microsoft a report from TAEUS, a Colorado-based firm that specialises in intellectual property valuation, reverse engineering, litigation support and expert testimony.

TAEUS describe the Microsoft documentation as variously 'entirely inadequate', 'devoted to obsolete functionality', 'self-contradictory' and written 'primarily to maximise volume (page count) while minimising useful information'.

The Commission notes that both the TAEUS and professor Barrett reports point out that Microsoft 'appears to assume that it is for users of the documentation to report incorrect, incomplete or inaccurate information which Microsoft would then correct'.

Professor Barrett disagrees: 'The response that such 'bugs' in the documentation are unavoidable is understandable, but to expect that all such subsequent problems will be encountered and reported by users... is not sufficient. It is Microsoft's responsibility to present suitable documentation.'

Microsoft has requested an oral hearing for 30 and 31 March after which the Commission will decide whether to begin imposing back-dated fines of up to €2mn per day.

In a statement released last month, Microsoft insisted that it has 'complied fully with the technical documentation requirements' and claimed that the Commission had ignored important evidence.