Microsoft has lost its appeal against a record 497m euro (£343m; $690m) fine imposed by the European Commission in a long-running competition dispute.

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

"The past two months have been interesting in the Chinese sense. A primary culprit of that was Microsoft's failed attempt to push their proprietary MS-OOXML format through ISO. But there were also talks and meetings with ministers (see [1][2]) to promote Free Software in Chile, the SELF board meeting in Argentina, review meeting in Brussels, and launch of the SELF beta platform.

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.

Microsoft has dropped its appeal against the Korean Fair Trade Commission, complying with the antitrust regulator's 2006 instruction to pay a 32.4 billion won ($34 million) fine and to sell its Windows operating system and other software products separately.

Microsoft has dropped two outstanding appeals of European antitrust rulings, following the deal struck with the European Commission at the beginning of this week, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

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.

The European Commission - Directorate for Competition has officially dropped its antitrust charges against Microsoft, after Microsoft agreed to provide users of its Windows operating system a choice of web browsers. Under the new deal, Microsoft will avoid future E.C. fines and, from March, consumers will have a choice of up to twelve other web browsers.

In the next seven days, both Microsoft's European Union and United States antitrust cases will reach critical junctures. A routine U.S. hearing tomorrow will likely be anything but routine. Elsewhere, an appeals court will issue a ruling on the validity of Microsoft's adverse antitrust case in Europe.