Office and Vista become legal targets

A group of the world's largest technology firms yesterday complained to the European Commission accusing Microsoft of taking non-competitive actions.

An alliance called European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS), which includes big names such as IBM, Nokia, Oracle, Red Hat RealNetworks Sun Microsystems, Corel, and Opera, said they have officially submitted complaints. claims Microsoft 's upcoming and upcoming products to the European Commission - specifically, the Office suite and the upcoming version of Windows Vista.

A concrete example outlined in the complaint is that Microsoft refused to provide information to help competitors develop products compatible with the Office suite. Specifically, Microsoft refused to provide data such as ".doc, .xls, and .ppt" file formats. This makes applications like OpenOffice and StarOffice impossible to fully compatible with MS Office.

ECIS calls on the committee to take specific actions to end Microsoft's non-competitive actions - actions that ECIS considers threatening the true choices of individual and business users. Microsoft's actions only help them consolidate their monopoly as well as expand the market dominance of a range of existing and upcoming products.

Although the ECIS complaint is completely separate from the European Commission's antitrust lawsuit, the association still believes its complaints are related to the rulings of the 2004 lawsuit. .

In contrast, Microsoft rejected the ECIS allegation that it launched new products that would benefit users, especially products that made breakthroughs in technology such as Office 12 or Vista.

ECIS is a front in which our competitors want to use legal tools to enhance their business advantages. When they face new innovations they use legal tools.

Microsoft said it would be willing to provide the fastest and most complete information to the committee if it asked the firm to respond to the complaints.

A spokesman for the board Neelie Kroes said the committee is currently considering those complaints carefully.