Talk:Microsoft Corp. v. Commission

Antitrust?
... A case that occurred in the EU, but it is still being referred to as an antitrust case? We call it competition law, not antitrust law, so lets work a bit on this. This article is also lacking in references to judgments. Edit: I may accept the antitrust, but come on, the only link to a judgment makes it clear that was in fact the Commissions decision. I hope someone who actually followed this debacle has a clue as to what went on, because it'll take me a while to research this one. Sephui 14:23, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I think the use of the term "antitrust" is used so that it would be easily understandable to an American audience. On the EU site itself, "competition" is described as "antitrust" http://www.eurunion.org/policyareas/antitrust.htm, albeit on the delegation to the U.S.'s site. Utxhalfer 19:26, 18 July 2007 (UTC)utxhalfer

Only as a pointer to Americans - the term 'antitrust' itself is an anacronism 138.37.250.195 (talk) 10:01, 27 February 2008 (UTC)


 * The article's name should be changed. The term "antitrust" has no meaning with respect to competition law outside of the United States.  Indeed, the Wikipedia article antitrust redirects to competition law.  I will move the page to "European Union Microsoft competition case" with a redirect. - Jord (talk) 14:51, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Ruling
"for alleged antitrust abuse." -- as there is a ruling by the Commission it is not "alleged" abuse anymore.

To be done
An authority and a plaintiff are not on the same level. An antitrust authority is a kind of court or "market police". Some players complain, so an investigation is started and a ruling made. The party can appeal at a court. Microsoft and the EU are not on the same level.Arebenti 01:15, 5 September 2007 (UTC) e.g. "EU announced that it believed Microsoft did not comply fully with the ruling," - no! The EU competition authority rules: x does not comply yet. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arebenti (talk • contribs) 01:16, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

No mention of FSFE?
Free Software Foundation Europe have been working on this since the beginning (2001?) and are admitted as third-parties (supporting the Samba project). There's currently no mention of them or free software or Samba in the article. I'll try to add something when I get time but some help'd be great. --Gronky 11:00, 18 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I did some clean-up, more is required. IMO there should be a section about what penalties have been applied, split into three subsections on fines, interop specs, and de-bundling. --Gronky 14:26, 18 September 2007 (UTC)


 * European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) website is worth reading, and will make a good ext link -so I will add it in a minute.--Aspro 18:24, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

No mention of realnetworks and others competitors?
according to groklaw RealNetworks was one of the first complainers... that lead to the production of the N version of windows

Software patents
It was claimed that EPO granting software patents was "illegitimate" followed by examples of why it may or may not be legitimate. Without sources this was an opinion - not a fact and I removed it. 63.241.31.130 (talk) 21:57, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

there is also that:

(11) Throughout the procedure, a significant number of companies, comprising major Microsoft competitors, as well as industrial associations, have been admitted as interested third parties. These are inter alia the Association for Competitive Technology (“ACT”), Time Warner Inc. (“Time Warner”, previously AOL Time Warner), the Computer & Communications Industry Association (“the CCIA”), the Computing Technology Industry Association (“CompTIA”), the Free Software Foundation Europe (“FSF Europe”), Lotus Corporation (“Lotus”), Novell Inc. (“Novell”), RealNetworks, Inc. (“RealNetworks”), and the Software & Information Industry Association (“the SIIA”). Microsoft has been asked to comment on certain submissions by these interested third parties and by the complainant Sun, and in particular on the comments that these third parties and the complainant made on Microsoft’s reply to the second Statement of Objections and on certain submissions that they made following the supplementary Statement of Objections.

from http://ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/antitrust/cases/decisions/37792/en.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by GNUtoo (talk • contribs)
 * This is Wikipedia, go ahead and expand the article :-) Han-Kwang (t) 12:36, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Timeline
Maybe a timeline of the whole process should be added? Like here: http://www.eubusiness.com/news_live/1189648026.39/ Azrael Nightwalker (talk) 11:58, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

A confusing, unclear, disorganized jumble of an article
This article is one of the most confusing, unclear, and disorganized jumbles of information on a topic I have seen on Wikipedia. First of all, I linked to it from the main page news item. I have casually followed Microsoft's aggressively monopolistic way of doing business and often mediocre and unoriginal products since Windows 95 debuted. But I am not in the computer, IT, software, or internet industries, and know only a very little more than the average person about either relevant technical subjects or the applicable law. So I was interested in the announcement that something important had just happened regarding MS's notorious bundling and licensing practices. This article jumps around in time, back and forth through several years of issues and events, and it is very hard to follow what has happened, in what sequence, and what relation these events have to one another. It is particularly difficult to follow what the various fines are each for, and earlier or secondary illegal or non-compliant behavior by MS are glossed over, making the article further a hodgepodge of fuzzy references. The author(s) use many abbreviations [who's reference and meaning are unclear] to refer to organizations, software, events, and concepts. They should initially be spelled out, or at least asterisked. They aren't. There are probably at least another 6 or 8 other similar failures to define and explain things here reported to have happened, results of such, and events or actions likely to occur in the near future. The article is overwrought as well with jargon and specialized or technical diction/usage that I didn't have time to look up (and I shouldn't have to, I think).

Lastly and most importantly, the tone, point of view, and target audience are thoroughly inappropriate for Wikipedia. It's written by someone in the IT, software, or allied industries for others like him/her, and supposes all sorts of special prior knowledge most Wikipedia users don't have. I strongly urge someone who does know the issues and events involved in this case to rewrite this from the bottom up in a style and language that will be clear and accesible to the sophisticated general reader without particular prior familiarity with the case history. There are a lot of very real economic issues, issues of privacy, corporate citizenship and obligation, freedom of expression and inquiry, and others at stake here, but you'd never know it from reading this article. Alas, Wikipedia is loaded down with many thousands of articles on all sorts of subjects that fail in just the way that this one fails. I can't do the job in this case; it requires someone who already knows and understands the material to make it available and accesible to the rest of us who actually in this case NEED the information.Googlyelmo (talk) 12:18, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Microsoft revenues versus Microsoft fines
If would be interesting to know the revenues that Microsoft got from the European market in the time period of the lawsuit European Commission v. Microsoft Corp. Did they outweigh the fines? I guess this was the case. This would be an interesting information. --Furfur March-7-2008 9:45 CEST —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.123.91.248 (talk) 08:49, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

This article is very confusing.
It's bordering on a circular definition. To those with limited technological and technology laws it is practially meaningless. It also lacks links to articles that might help better explain it. I would help, but I don't know the first thing about this, hence my problem. Oh, and whilst I'm here, how does releasing a version of windows with no WMP solve anything? Who did WMP hurt? 82.69.80.47 (talk) 23:09, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Anyone else who makes media playing software, and, by extension, potentially consumers.. The EU said that when you were supplying an operating system, you couldn't bundle your own media player with it. That's not part of the operating system. You're establishing dominance in one field by your dominance in another. The EU considers that unfair competition and an abuse of a monopoly position in the market. The EU said they'd have to either supply their operating system without their media player, or provide a range of media players with it. 86.44.6.14 (talk) 13:05, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

ms payed?
why doesn't the article state if/when MS payed it's fine? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dak (talk • contribs) 05:27, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes that was my question too. Has money been actually paid or not? 2404:130:0:1000:3CF9:16AA:3F9A:43CE (talk) 00:44, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

"Criticism on EU"
I'm of half a mind to remove the section "Criticism on EU". It's confusingly written, mostly uncited, and the one cited quote it does have appears to be out of context ("European Union comes from a more statist tradition that places greater confidence in the utility of governmental intervention in markets."- that seems to me to be more a comment on laissez-faire and free market than on protectionism). The article DOES need a Criticism section, but the one we've got wont do. I've tried searching around and I can't find any well-sourced criticism on the web, so I think I'm just going to have to remove it for the time being until someone can re-write. Any objection? Patch86 (talk) 21:33, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Agree with criticisms, needs update
Back when I created the article years ago, it was still in its infancy and most online RS's were pretty technical. It really does need a bit of a rework:
 * It needs to be rewritten a bit for non-technical person. I wrote it in IT prose at the time as that was my native writing style and this was meant as a stub at the time.  I was sort of hoping someone more privy to the case would expand on it more, as the EU stuff wasn't something I studied very thoroughly and there is probably far more info in EU sources.
 * The facts/statements need to be connection better and the actual real-word impact of the various opinions, aspects, judgements and actions needs to be explained.
 * Generally, it is just a list of facts from the EUs side of the case, it really needs both sides of the coin opinion-wise
 * It isn't even close to complete - it should probably have a section detailing who all is involved in the case and such
 * Recent info such as http://windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=102923&feed=rss&subj=0 is completely missing

Heck, I was pretty shocked when I made the article at the time just so the microsoft article didn't have 2 pages of info on the case.

Anyway, the big problem with all those points is that you need a certain kind of RS. Most RS's (Reliable Sources) are from a very technical perspective, especially online. RN 11:40, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Broken Link In References
I was reading this article when I found there was a dead link in the References section. I went to that same website and found two news articles that were related to this case: Danielh32 (talk) 14:11, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * http://myrtlebeachonline.com/2012/07/17/2943204/eu-opens-antitrust-investigation.html#storylink=misearch
 * http://myrtlebeachonline.com/2012/07/17/2943734/key-dates-in-eu-antitrust-action.html#storylink=misearch

What is this BS?
Seriously, a browser choice window, but not an operating system choice one? People who aren't aware that there are different browsers aren't even more so aware that there are different operating systems. That is far more important. I wouldn't be surprised if even microsoft themselves initiated the browser choice issue, to give off the illusion that you would have already been warned about far more important choices, if there only were any. Who makes those legal decisions in the EU? It is really just a big fat joke, if you think about it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.10.71.235 (talk) 21:20, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Who was the plaintiff?
Did Microsoft sue the EU or the other way around? I believe common practice is to have the plaintiff on the left side of the v (in the title), which would imply that Microsoft wa the plaintiff in this case. But this is how the article starts: "Microsoft Corp v Commission (2007) T-201/04 is a case brought by the European Commission of the European Union (EU) against Microsoft"

Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 15:24, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

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Does this apply to the USA?
It says EU but does this also apply to USA? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Slinkyw (talk • contribs) 16:39, 26 March 2021 (UTC)