Legal News

Get a Room! The Latest Spat Between Microsoft and the EU

By Ashby Jones

This is a post about Microsoft.

First news first: A federal jury in Tyler, Texas on Wednesday ordered the company to pay Canadian software firm i4i Ltd $200 million in damages for infringing a patent. Click here for the report from the All Things Digital blog. The verdict was the second-largest of the year, following a $388 million verdict in April against Microsoft won by Singapore-based Uniloc. Microsoft, which was repped by Weil Gotshal’s Matt Powers, said it would appeal.

Our other news on the company comes courtesy of Charles Forelle, a WSJ reporter in Brussels, who sent along the following on Microsoft’s latest European antitrust adventure. Writes Forelle:

Lawyers for Microsoft had expected to be back in Brussels this summer for a hearing in an antitrust case pending against it by EU regulators. But due to a strange tiff between the EU and the company concerning — yes — finding a room in which to hold the hearing, it looks like the hearing won’t be happening at all.

The backstory: In January, the EU sent Microsoft its initial findings, accusing the company of illegally tying Internet Explorer to Windows to stifle competition in the browser market. Click here for an earlier blog post on the case.

A quirk of EU antitrust practice: A company that's been preliminarily accused of wrongdoing (as Microsoft has), has the right to request a closed-door pow-wow with the regulator at which it presents its side of the story, in the hopes of changing the regulator's mind before it adopts a final ruling.

So, Microsoft filed a formal reply, and asked for a hearing. The EU scheduled it for June 3-5.

Thing is, a major antitrust conference is taking place in Zürich from June 3-5. In a blog post Microsoft complained that top EU officials would be in Zürich, and thus not at the hearing. Dave Heiner, a Microsoft deputy general counsel, posed the Zen-like question: Why have a hearing if no one's around to hear it?

According to Microsoft, the EU rebuffed the company’s complaints, saying there were no other days with free rooms. When Microsoft offered to provide the room, the EU declined, Microsoft said. It would be June 3-5 or nothing, said the EU. So Microsoft picked, well, nothing.

An EU spokesman, Jonathan Todd, when asked about the room kerfuffle, said: "There was room on the 3rd to the 5th of June." Todd said the EU assured Microsoft that it would be "properly represented" during those dates. "There was no reason not to do it" on June 3-5, Todd said.

One possible solution: The European Parliament, which usually sits in Brussels, has a second building in Strasbourg, France, that's empty more often than not. Surely there are a few free rooms there.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on May 21, 2009 (boomark / email).