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The EU is threatening to fine Microsoft again for failing to develop a pricing schedule for technology sharing that satisfies the EU's requirements.
And what were those requirements? Well, they are sort of like the Native American sacred sites that bedevil land developers in the U.S. -- many are so sacred that we can't tell you where they are, but we'll sue you if you hit one.
The EU's earlier judgment, 300 pages long, contained one sentence on protocol pricing, which said that they should be reasonable and non-discriiminatory. So Microsoft submitted 8,000 pages of technical documentation and 1,500 pages of information on prices, much of it developed by the accounting firm Price, Waterhouse, only to have the EU say: "No - that's not what we meant":
Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said, “Microsoft has agreed that the main basis for pricing should be whether its protocols are innovative. The Commission's current view is that there is no significant innovation in these protocols. I am therefore again obliged to take formal measures to ensure that Microsoft complies with its obligations.” I confess to bafflement. If the technology is not valuable, then why is the EU so determined that MS make it available? And if it is valuable, then why shouldn't a charge be based on a marketplace willingness to pay, not on an EU bureaucratic assessment of "innovation," an oxymoron if there ever was one.
As Sonia Arrison of the Pacific Research Institute noted last year, the game increasingly looks like a cynical expropriation of the property of successful U.S. companies.
If Eurocrats can force Microsoft to give up significant chunks of its valuable IP, there's no stopping them from doing likewise to other successful American companies. The next target may be Apple Computer (Nasdaq: AAPL) Latest News about Apple, which recently got in a spat with French legislators when they passed a bill to force the sharing of iTunes code. And the problems don't end in Europe.
Korea, for instance, has already sicced its competition police on Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) Latest News about Qualcomm, Microsoft and Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) Latest News about Intel and China is starting to re-examine its antitrust laws. What many countries are calling "competition policy" is starting to look a lot like anti-Americanism that specifically targets successful U.S. companies. I am happy not to be employed in the Microsoft legal department; one of the most difficult things in dealing with Kangaroo courts is the need to keep a straight face and a deferential manner, lest they kick you even harder. I would have a problem.
posted by James DeLong @ 1:25 PM |
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