A landmark court ruling which last year backed the European Commission's last competition action against Microsoft may not be as helpful in its current action as has been widely thought, according to a competition lawyer.
The Commission's 2004 decision to fine Microsoft €497 million was backed by the Court of the First Instance of the European Communities (CFI) and the judgment is widely regarded as having strengthened the Commission's hand for cases it has subsequently launched.
But an analysis of the decision by competition lawyer Adrian Wood of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM, found that the case offers fewer comforts to the Commission than many have assumed.
"There is still no real consensus on what [the Microsoft ruling] tells us for the future," Wood told OUT-LAW Radio. "The ability to have some form of over-arching broad set of principles was lost a little bit and so in that sense there is a disappointment there. We did not get crisp, clear, practical pointers for generic use."
The Commission has begun competition cases against Intel, Qualcomm and a new action against Microsoft in recent months, moves that have been seen as a reflection of its post-ruling confidence. But Wood said it ought not to rely too heavily on a judgment seen by some as flawed.
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