Microsoft has filed a new lawsuit against the European Commission, the latest move in its long-running battle against antitrust sanctions imposed by the Commission for abuse of its dominant Windows software. The lawsuit before the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg is to clear up whether some Microsoft software protocols or computer rules of the road should be made public or be kept secret as intellectual property.
The issue arises out of a March, 2004, decision by the European Commission finding Microsoft abused dominance of the Windows operating system so it could damage rival makers of work-group servers and rival makers of media players.Microsoft paid a 497 million-euro fine and issued remedies on the two issues, but nearly 1-1/2 years later those sanctions have yet to bite. The lawsuit, filed on August 10 but which only became public on Wednesday, deals only with an aspect of the work-group servers issue. The biggest makers of rival server software are "open source" providers who, like Microsoft, make server software that runs printing, filing and security tasks for small office groups. They make public the source codes for their products.
News source: Reuters
