Microsoft EUMicrosoft has launched a legal challenge to protect itself from an order by the European Commission to make valuable information about the group’s flagship Windows operating system available to rivals in the open-source community.
The move comes is the latest twist in the long anti-trust battle between the Commission and the US software group that saw Microsoft punished and fined for breaking European Union competition rules in March last year.
Among other things, the Commission’s ruling against the group forces Microsoft to share sensitive information on Windows contained in so-called communication protocols with rival groups. While Microsoft has accepted this obligation, it refuses to allow competitors to distribute products developed with the help of the protocols under an open-source licence. Microsoft says such a move would allow rivals unfettered access to its intellectual property and is not covered by the March decision.
