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Microsoft told to comply with Commission ruling 'urgently'


Microsoft has been warned to urgently implement sanctions imposed on it in March last year for its breach of European antitrust laws. Failure to do so will oblige the Commission "to take formal steps to ensure compliance," said a Commission spokesman.

Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd confirmed in February that the Commission has the power to impose penalty payments of up to five percent of Microsoft's average daily turnover. But the Commission has so far been reluctant to impose fines for failure to comply that could, based on last year's turnover, amount to around $5 million a day.

According to reports, the hastily arranged meeting between the European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Tuesday night was initiated by Microsoft. The meeting was said to be friendly, but Kroes refused to compromise on the need for the software giant to comply with the terms of the Commission decision reached last year.

This found that Microsoft broke competition law by leveraging its near monopoly in the market for PC operating systems onto the markets for work group server operating systems and for media players.

The Commission imposed sanctions, ordering Microsoft to give competitors the specifications (but not the source code) for its client-to-server and server-to-server communications protocols.

Microsoft was also required to offer an alternative stripped-down version of Windows to PC manufacturers and when selling directly to end users and it was fined €497 million for abusing its market dominance in the EU.

While some progress has been made towards compliance, Microsoft still has work to do.

"Mrs Kroes said that the Commission expects the decision adopted in March 2004 to be complied with urgently and in full," said Todd, according to the BBC.

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