European Court lowers record fine for Microsoft

The European Court of Justice has reduced a multimillion-euro fine for Microsoft by 39 million euros. However, the court ruled that the fine was rightly imposed. The fine was given because Microsoft abused its market position.

In 2004, the European Commission ruled that Microsoft must give its competitors access to information about how Microsoft products work so that they can make their software compatible. The company was also fined almost 500 million euros.

Four years later, the company received a follow-up fine of almost 900 million euros for allegedly failing to comply with the 2004 decree. That was a record at the time. An appeal to the European Court concerned the latter fine. The Court ruled that the fine was correctly imposed.

However, the fine is slightly reduced because of a letter sent by the Committee in 2005, which was allegedly insufficiently taken into account. That letter discussed the way in which Microsoft should deal with the European Commission’s wishes.