Microsoft Says EU Riding Roughshod on its Defense

BRUSSELS— Microsoft accused the European Commission upon Wednesday of "riding roughshod" above its defense rights, but the Commission said the firm had all it extremityed to argue against possible fines of 2 million euro daily.

The U software giant faces a February 15 deadline to rejoin to Commission charges that it should be fined for failing to carry on the outside sanctions imposed in a 2004 antitrust decision.

Microsoft said it necessityed more time and complete access to its file, including communications the company calls critical to its case.

"The Commission cannot unilaterally take away a fundamental right of defense" said Horacio Gutierrez, associate general interchange of opinion for Microsoft in Europe.

"This would be the same as taking away the right to a hearing, or the right to answer to a Statement of Objections," Gutierrez said, citing sum of two units other rights.

"Today we are les than a week away from the deadline for filing our answer so I suppose it is now official and they are indeed riding roughshod above our defense rights."

A Commission spokesman said the company had all the access it straited to defend itself and not ever bothered to raise concerns about access at the appropriate time.

Microsoft said it had a right to diocese correspondence between the Commission, an independent monitoring trustee, and technical advisers.

The Commission, in its 2004 decision, had rest Microsoft used its dominance to struggle unfairly, fined it 497 million euro ($595 million), and imposed remedies.

It ordered the firm to provide workable instructions that would give permission to competitors develop server software—for functions of that kind as managing printers—that worked with Microsoft's Windows operating a whole as well as Microsoft's programs did.

Instead, the independent trustee base the documentation supplied by Microsoft "fundamentally flawed in its conception."

In November, the Commission formally decided that Microsoft had failed to carry without the remedies and gave it until December 15 to comply or face a novel daily fine.

That deadline passed, for a like reason the Commission opened new proceedings to impose the daily fine based in part upon the trustee's findings.

But Microsoft says the trustee and the technical advisers can be meditation of in one of sum of two units ways, but not both.

They are either internal adroits in which case the Commission cannot cite their opinions as evidence.

Or, the Commission could consider the trustee and technical advisers as genuine independent quicks in which case Microsoft merits access to their communications with the Commission with equal reason it can see if the Commission helped influence the clevers

Gutierrez said the Commission must decide: "The Commission cannot have its cake and eat it."

But the Commission said Microsoft's argument came too late.

"They should have challenged the decision nominating him, which outlined the bounds and conditions of his relationship with the Commission," Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd said.

Beyond that, he said, "If they were to consider the trustee's conclusions to be wrongful they are in any case in a position to ascertain them wrong. They don't ne to know whether, for example, he was influenced in more [i]or[/i] less way by the Commission."

Todd also argued that the trustee relationship was like that used in merger cases when correspondence between the Commission and the trustee was always confidential.

Copyright ?© 2006 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserv Originally appearing in eWEEK.