Microsoft had to pay $613 million in 2004 for breaking EU’s fair trade laws and the new fines have been gathered from the same conviction. Microsoft had six months to gather documentation for its PC and server systems and hand these over so that competing companies would be able to develop software for Microsoft’s operating systems in the best possible way. According to the EU commission Microsoft has not even been close to supplying all the information it has required and therefore it received a fine equivalent to 1.5 million euro per day since December 15 2005 when the deadline was for Microsoft to hand in the papers.
The sum has grown quite much during the six months that have passed since the deadline; 280.5 million euro or $357 million. This does not necessarily mean that it is the final sum as Microsoft now has up until July 31 to complete the information it has handed over to the EU commission. If it would fail to hand in all the information up until July 31 EU will raise the daily fine to 3 million euro until the information has been received.
Microsoft has in turn claimed it did not receive enough information about what information EU wanted and has now published a statement where it says that the fine is apropiate and especially not the size of it as it claims that commisionäs decision and demands to have been very vague.
“The fine announced today is larger than the fines the Commission has imposed for even the most severe competition law infringements, such as price-fixing cartels. When you consider Microsoft’s massive efforts to comply with this ruling, and the fact that more than a dozen companies are already using similar documentation provided in the U.S. to ship actual products, we do not believe this fine is justified.”
