Fresh action in the European Commission's antitrust proceedings against Microsoft: On May 24, the European Court of Justice conducts a hearing on Microsoft's appeal against the fine. FSFE has participated in the case for a decade and will intervene on the Commission's behalf.

If one were to believe Microsoft, antitrust law is for sore losers who are too lazy to innovate, and the decision of the European Court of Justice against Microsoft was to the detriment of consumers around the world. One might even believe that any company with large enough market share would now have to fear the wrath of the European Commission and its anti-innovation bloodhounds.

European antitrust regulators are investigating whether Microsoft abused its desktop software market dominance in its effort to standardize the Office Open XML file formats.

A European Union court on Monday dismissed Microsoft's appeal against the 2004 ruling which found the company had abused its dominant market position to score over rivals. Microsoft's lawyers failed to impress the European Court of First Instance, which not only dismissed the case but also rejected the appeal against the €497 million ($690 million) fine imposed on the company.

A European court confirmed on Tuesday that it will rule on September 17 on whether software giant Microsoft broke European Union antitrust regulations.

A European Union court upheld most of a landmark 2004 European Commission antitrust decision against Microsoft

Microsoft may have won a year-long quest to make its Office Open XML document format an ISO-recognised international standard, but claims of foul play in the voting process may come back to haunt the software giant when the European Commission concludes its latest antitrust investigation of Microsoft's business practices.

Microsoft Corp. was smacked down by Europe's second-highest court Monday and publicly scolded by a top antitrust regulator -- warned to stop using the dominance of Windows to its advantage in other areas of the software business.

There has been criticism against the European Commission for pursuing abusive behaviour by Microsoft, and against Mozilla for wanting a fair chance to compete against Microsoft. The blog post explains why the Commission is doing the right thing to take antitrust violation seriously, and why the Free Software community should support this case.