Microsoft Once Again In EU Legal Crosshairs

Microsoft stands accused of failing to adhere to two EC Court of First Instance rulings handed down last September.

One such ruling required Microsoft to share interoperability information for several of its products, including the Office suite, servers, and .NET Framework. Microsoft has also allegedly failed to comply with a court ruling that it has illegally tied Internet Explorer to Windows, which stems from a complaint filed by the open source Web browser developer Opera.

But that's not all, folks. The Commission is also looking into whether Microsoft has been illegally tying newer products such as desktop search and Windows Live into Windows, and is casting an investigative eye at Microsoft's new Office Open XML file format.

"The Commission plans to look into whether Microsoft's new file format Office Open XML, as implemented in Office, is sufficiently interoperable with competitors' products," according to a European Commission statement.

A Microsoft spokesperson said the company plans to cooperate fully with the Commission's investigation and provide any and all information necessary.

"We are committed to ensuring that Microsoft is in full compliance with European law and our obligations as established by the European Court of First Instance in its September 2007 ruling," said the spokesperson.