Focus in EU Microsoft hearing shifts to computer code

The European Commission’s order for Microsoft to share its code with rivals so that their software can run smoothly with Windows takes central stage today in the third day of the company’s bid to have its record fine and antitrust ruling overturned.

Microsoft lawyer Ian Forrester said the decision was an attempt “to handicap the (market) leader in perpetuity”.

“The decision condemned a company for not saying yes to a company who requests a huge amount of secret technology for the future,” he said in his opening argument in Luxembourg.

Microsoft’s rivals were simply harassing the company through the EU courts to seek “a better outcome in Brussels than they did in their domestic courts,” he claimed.

The world’s largest software maker says it has the right to guard its valuable intellectual property and control, and maintains that it has worked strenuously to comply with the 2004 EU ruling that told it to pay a record €497m fine.

But in December, the EU said the company had not done enough to help rivals develop compatible software and threatened Microsoft with daily fines of up to €1m, backdated to December 15.