A group of Microsoft rivals and customers filed a new complaint with the European Commission yesterday accusing the US software giant of competing unfairly.
The commission has been locked in a battle with Microsoft over a 2004 EU court ruling that the software giant abused its dominant market position.
Microsoft faces a €2 million daily fine if the commission decides that it has not complied with that ruling.
The European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) said in a statement that Microsoft "threatens to deny enterprises and individual consumers real choice".
ECIS includes IBM, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Nokia, RealNetworks and others. The complaint asks the commission to put an end to practices that the group says have hemmed in its members.
"ECIS deeply regrets that strong anti-trust law enforcement appears to be the only way to stop the sustained anti-competitive behaviour of Microsoft," Simon Awde, chairman of the group, said in a statement. Microsoft shrugged off the new complaint.
"We have come to expect that as we introduce new products that benefit consumers, particularly with the kind of breakthrough technologies in Office 12 and Windows Vista, a few competitors will complain," it said in a statement.
Microsoft said IBM and other competitors were attempting to use the regulatory process to their business advantage.
"When faced with innovation, they choose litigation," the statement said, adding it would respond quickly to any request from the commission relating to the complaint.
ECIS said that limits placed on Microsoft in the 2004 anti-trust court ruling - now under appeal by the company - needed to be rapidly and fully enforced.
The group said Microsoft's Office software was an example of a Microsoft product that did not permit rivals to interoperate properly with the Windows operating system, preventing them from competing. - (Reuters)
