News
Microsoft's Subpoena for IBM Docs Rejected
Latest effort to obtain documents in its EU antitrust case fails.
(Brussels, Belgium) -- A
New York court has quashed a Microsoft Corp. subpoena aimed at
compelling International Business Machines Corp. to hand over documents
related to the software giants's
European antitrust case.
Judge Colleen McMahon said
Microsoft's subpoena amounted to a "blatant end run" on the European
Commission's authority, according to an April 21 court order obtained
on Friday.
Microsoft accused the commission of
colluding with IBM and other rivals
and denying the company a fair chance to review key evidence.
The
regulator has refused to give Microsoft access to some documents,
citing confidentiality concerns and rivals' "fear of retaliation,"
according to a Boston court ruling earlier this week in which a judge
quashed a similar Microsoft request for documents held by Novell Inc.
Last
month a U.S. federal court in California rejected Microsoft's request
for documents from Oracle Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. Microsoft
appealed that decision. However, Microsoft decided to withdraw the
appeal following the New York court's ruling.
"The
writing is clearly on the wall for these actions, and we will not be
pursuing them any further," Microsoft spokesman Tom Brookes said.
The
four competitors named in the U.S. subpoenas have supported European
regulators' finding that Microsoft isn't doing enough to comply with a
March 2004 antitrust decision. In that ruling, the European Commission
fined Microsoft a record euro497 million (US$613 million) and ordered
it to help rivals make their software products work with servers
running the ubiquitous Windows operating system.
Microsoft
now faces further fines of as much as euro2 million (US$2.4 million) a
day backdated to Dec. 15 for failing to provide adequate guidelines for
other software developers.
Adam Cohen is a
correspondent of Dow Jones Newswires.