February 12, 2003	Wednesday	Zul Hijjah 10, 1423

BRUSSELS, Feb 11: After largely overcoming its legal travails at home, US software giant Microsoft faced new action in Europe on Tuesday from rivals who accused it of being an “unrepentant monopolist”.

The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), which represents companies from small start-ups to global leaders such as Sun Microsystems and Oracle, said it had lodged a complaint with the European Commission on January 31.

The association’s chief executive, Ed Black, said billionaire Bill Gates’ firm was an “unrepentant monopolist”.

He added that the European Commission’s existing anti-trust probe into Microsoft had “focussed on a relatively narrow base of activity, but we believe a wider range should be looked at”.

The commission — the European Union’s executive arm — said it would treat the new complaint separately to its two-year-old investigation into the software giant.

The existing case is expected to be concluded in the coming months, commission spokeswoman Amelia Torres said.

“It would not make sense to bring any new aspects into the ongoing case, which would have the effect of delaying a conclusion on it,” she told reporters.

In February 2000, the commission launched an “extensive investigation” into Microsoft’s Windows 2000 operating system. In August 2001 it widened the probe to cover the firm’s dominance of low-end server operating systems.

The extended inquiry is also investigating whether Microsoft illegally tied its Media Player product with Windows.

The CCIA complaint goes much further. It alleges that Microsoft’s flagship operating system, Windows XP, poses a new threat to competition, especially in mobile communications, digital music, video distribution and new Web services.

It claims Microsoft’s dominant Office software, which includes Word, Excel and other common programmes, is designed to discourage customers from using it with non-Windows programmes, such as Linux and Apple Computer software.

The complaint accuses Microsoft of violating the EU Treaty’s Article 82, which governs anti-trust matters, by bundling other products into Windows XP, including music and video-editing software.

In November, a federal judge approved a hotly disputed deal between Microsoft and the US government to settle a four-year battle over the software giant’s illegal squelching of competitors.

The settlement forced the company to disclose some technical information and barred it from making anti-competitive agreements on Microsoft products.

But the CCIA complaint said the US ruling was perverse and demanded that Brussels bring Microsoft to heel in Europe.

By failing to rein in Microsoft, the US settlement “explicitly sets the stage for this complaint”, it reads.

“The (US) agreement does not restore competition to the operating system market. It does not deny Microsoft even the most obvious benefits of its adjudicated anti-competitive activity,” it said.

“It does not even prevent Microsoft from engaging in some of the identical conduct that was found to be illegal (such as commingling the Internet Explorer code with Windows).”

Microsoft last month agreed to make substantial changes to its Passport system of accessing websites to meet EU data privacy concerns.—AFP