The bright side of innovation
,----[ Quote ]
| Perhaps Nicolas Sarkozy was confusing ancient Rome with the Treaty of Rome
| when the French president recently asked his Pythonesque question: what has
| competition ever done for us? With judgment due on September 17 in
| Microsoft's appeal against the European Commission's €497m ($675m, £335m)
| fine for alleged abuses of its dominant position in operating systems, it is
| a fitting time to take up his challenge.
`----
http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto090420071441281680&referrer_id=yahoofinance
More abuse (prior art):
Separation of Church and Microsoft
,----[ Quote ]
| "Last week, the USPTO published a rather odd Microsoft patent application for
| Content Ratings and Recommendations, which describes how religious-based
| communities and other 'subcultures' can use the patent-pending process to
| prevent their members from viewing undesirable television programs and
| movies."
`----
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/04/1638239&from=rss
Related:
EC can curb Gazprom monopoly says Sweden's Bildt
,----[ Quote ]
| "The Commission has proved that they can use (competition authority)
| against Microsoft and General Electric and they can use it ...
| against Gazprom, if that was necessary as well," Bildt told
| Reuters in an interview.
|
| The ultimate sanction the European Union competition authority can
| take is to bar a company from doing business within the EU, if iti
| s proven to have violated EU law.
|
| This gives it sway over the companies such as General Electric
| Co. and Microsoft Corp. because they do business in the bloc. But
| anti-trust authorities worldwide have been notably ineffective
| against the open cartel activities of OPEC.
`----
http://yahoo.reuters.com/news/articlehybrid.aspx?storyID=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20061218:MTFH81138_2006-12-18_21-51-18_L18130396&type=comktNews&rpc=44
http://tinyurl.com/ybrysx
Becta's schools software scheme reported to EC
,----[ Quote ]
| An advisor to Becta, the education technology quango, has complained
| to the European Commission about its procurement process for firms
| to provide online learning platforms and content to British schools.
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/08/becta_ec_complaint/
European Commission throws money at Open Source software quality control
,----[ Quote ]
| As a founder of the Open Source Consortium, Taylor also has an
| interest in increasing the level of professionalism in the open
| source community. He explains that one of the major criticisms
| of open source is that it is "cobbled together by a bunch of
| acne-ridden teens" He argues that having a way of demonstrating
| "provable quality" will really help...
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/12/quality_control/
EC leaves personal use out of criminal IP laws
,----[ Quote ]
| Arguments over the definition of what constitutes "commercial scale"
| infringement have been drawn out and complicated. Eventually, the
| committee agreed to leave copying for personal use uncriminalised.
| It states that to be criminal an infringement must be "a deliberate
| and conscious infringement of the intellectual property right for
| the purpose of obtaining commercial advantage".
|
| Lobby groups for rights holders are unsurprisingly unhappy with
| this clause. But the Business Software Alliance says it is also
| unhappy with the "incitement to infringe" clause. This might give
| Microsoft's execuitives pause for thought.
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/22/ec_ip_incite/
Microsoft Faces EU Probe on Word, Excel Dominance, People Say
,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, is facing deeper
| scrutiny from European regulators on whether it is abusing its dominance in
| word processing and spreadsheets, three people with direct knowledge of the
| case said.
`----
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aR9bHOp5bm3A&refer=europe
European Commission denies favouring open source
,----[ Quote ]
| The Commission's statement comes just days after it was lobbied to
| clarify its position on open source. The Initiative for Software
| Choice (ISC) wrote to the Commission immediately after the
| release of the report urging it to contact the "international
| press" to "set the record straight" over its stance. The ISC's
| external affairs are handled by CompTIA, which is funded by
| several IT vendors including Microsoft.
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
`----
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/30012007/152/european-commission-denies-favouring-open-source.html
|
|
