Windows - Eu

Microsoft Corporation has a major role in today computer industry, because its widespread operating system for the majority of personal computer, more than once it has faced issues regarding abuse of dominant position in the court all over the word.

First of all, to better understand present situation, a brief history is needed, between 1994 e 1998 Microsoft was sued by the Department Of Justice and twenty U.S. States because the giant of computer science forces the assemblers and the retailers of PC (OEM) to sell all the packet of Microsoft software and the browser "Internet Explorer", so it left competitors in the Internet browser business, especially "Netscape", out of the market.

After many year of legal disputes, on November 2001, the Department Of Justice reached an agreement with Microsoft to settle the case. The agreement required Microsoft to share its application programming interfaces with other companies and appoint a panel of three people who will have full access to Microsoft's systems, records, and source code for five years in order to ensure compliance. Microsoft announced that it would make some concessions, moreover, the Department Of Justice did not require Microsoft to change any of its code nor prevent Microsoft from tying other software with Windows in the future.

Since than Microsoft didn't change much its plan, because the court decision didn't impact much on the Company, but at least should give competitor's producers the ability to operate within the Microsoft's Operating System.

The European Commission, in the last few years has done extensive investigation into Microsoft's Windows 2000 Operating System, which was launched in February 2000, also has keep on eye on Microsoft's policy about multimedia.

A dominant position, under Article 82 of the EC Treaty has been defined by the Court of Justice of the European Communities as "a position of economic strength enjoyed by an undertaking which enables it to prevent effective competition being maintained on the relevant market by affording it the power to behave to an appreciable extent independently of its competitors, its customers and ultimately of the consumers".

The European Commission is focusing mainly on two topics:

Did Microsoft limit other IT companies to create software that interoperate with