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Microsoft Monday: it was defeat by a judicial whisker ...

By Johanna Gibson, David Pearce, Jeremy Phillips and Ilanah Simon.

The IPKat's friend Stephanie Bodoni together with Matthew Newman (both of Bloomberg) have just stunned him with the revelation that Microsoft might have made a giant mistake by settling antitrust charges brought by the European Commision after coming out on the wrong side of a ruling by the Court of First Instance. The software maker didn't know it was one vote away from winning. The story runs that the judges voted 7-6 against Microsoft on 'Microsoft Monday', 17 September 2007, according to two anonymous informants who reportedly had direct knowledge of the outcome. The two informants declined to be identified because EU court votes are confidential.

Right: "Divided We Stand" --the new motto of the Court of First Instance?

Says the IPKat, Microsoft may as well have carried its arguments to the full court. Last year Merpel said she was 100% sure that Microsoft would appeal, not merely because of the magnitude of the fine but because of the poor quality of the CFI's reasoning and the potentially damaging effect of its words, if read liberally, upon other IP rights and their owners.

Full post as published by IPKat on September 05, 2008 (boomark / email).