EU Concessions; Patent Setbacks

To meet demands by European antitrust regulators and avoid further fines, Microsoft has offered to change its licensing terms for communications protocols and has released an updated version of Windows XP without the Windows Media Player.

In other legal news, Microsoft has received a preliminary injunction against including a networking feature in upcoming versions of Windows and was ordered to pay an inventor US$9 million for infringing on a patent covering the ability to link Excel with Access.

Terms, OS Revised in EU Case

In early 2005, the European Commission (EC), the body that handles antitrust law for the European Union (EU), complained that Microsoft was not adhering to its Mar. 2004 antitrust ruling. Specifically, the EC said that Microsoft’s licensing terms for protocols used by Windows Server to communicate with other Windows machines were too expensive and prevented open source competitors from using these protocols. In addition, although Microsoft began offering a version of Windows without the Windows Media Player to OEMs in Jan. 2005, the EC had some complaints about its branding and features.