Microsoft, which will on Monday learn whether a top European Union court has annulled the landmark 2004 antitrust ruling against the US software developer, is warning technology rivals they should be careful what they wish for.

The U.S. Justice Department's top antitrust official called the remedy in Microsoft Corp's U.S. antitrust case "well-crafted" and "successful," and urged U.S. and European Union officials on Friday to be cautious in fighting abusive monopoly behavior.

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.

As you may or may not know, the official Boycott Microsoft Web site has been inactive for about 10 years. In the week to come we will present some of its old yet invaluable findings. We ought to share them in order to demonstrate how little the company has changed since the more brutal antitrust era (before change in administration, which has turned a blind eye to bad behavior since).

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.

Microsoft Corp. ended more than a decade of antitrust disputes with the European Union by giving consumers a choice among Web browsers.

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.

You have to read this paper! Microsoft - A History of Anticompetitive Behavior and Consumer Harm [PDF], and it's from the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, or ECIS.

European regulators are examining whether Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Corp violated antitrust laws during a struggle last year to ratify its Office software file format as an international standard, the Wall Street Journal reported.