EU receives Microsoft documents, but no decision on further fines

EU regulators said they had received more documents from Microsoft Corp. by a today deadline but had not yet made any decision to levy new fines.

The European Union fined Microsoft €280.5m on July 12 and threatened new fines of €3m a day – beginning today – unless the software maker obeyed a 2004 antitrust order to share programme code with rivals.

EU spokesman Michael Mann said regulators and an independent monitor were analysing the technical documentation they had received but it was too early to say if there would be new fines or how much they would be.

“We’ve received information from Microsoft and we’re looking at it. There is no decision as of yet whether it is what we want or not,” he said.

July’s fine comes on top of a €497m fine Microsoft received in March 2004 when the EU found it guilty of breaking antitrust law and ordered it to share communications code with rivals and offer a version of Windows without Media Player software within months.