General Court Issues Judgment On Microsoft Compliance Case

On 27 June 2012, the General Court issued its judgment on an appeal by Microsoft against the Commission's imposition of a periodic penalty payment of €899 million for its failure to apply "reasonable and non-discriminatory" rates for interoperability information.

The Court concluded, first, that Microsoft was in a position to assess whether the royalty rates it was proposing to apply were reasonable for the purposes of the 2004 decision without further guidance from the Commission. In this respect, the Court concluded that pricing principles agreed by Microsoft and the staff at Commission's Directorate-General for Competition ("DG Competition") at an early stage had provided the company with sufficient guidance. Although the Court acknowledged that Microsoft correctly noted that the requirement to impose "reasonable" rates was subject to multiple possible outcomes, the Court reasoned that this "finding confirms the merits of the Commission's argument that it is not