Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards

[Alexandre Dulaunoy]

On Sat, 6 Apr 2002, Martin Keegan wrote:

> 
> If there's a solid case, I'm well up for doing the paperwork to submit a
> formal complaint about this issue to the UK Office of Fair Trading, with
> whom I was in contact by phone yesterday. What needs to be demonstrated is
> evidence of abuse of a dominant position. 
> 
> This document linked from Advogato purports to be a combination of a
> copyright licence (as far as I can see -- and on closer inspection, 3.1
> says so) governing copying the Technical Reference document and a patent
> licence governing implementation of any system which comes under the
> claims of the patents mentioned. 
> 
> In practical terms, what this is is the US government forcing Microsoft to
> disclose technical information relating to one of the essential facilities
> it controls, and Microsoft doing so in such a way as to discriminate
> against one of its principal competitors.

The European Union is continuing the investigation of Microsoft for 
the anti-trust case. 

http://www.ccianet.org/ms_eu.php3
http://europa.eu.int/comm/competition/index_en.html

I think we can make a paperwork (maybe the same for the UK OFT) about the 
specific example of the CIFS standard. That can help the EU to add more 
information in the specific case. 

hope this helps

adulau

-- 
Alexandre Dulaunoy		
http://www.foo.be/
http://www.ael.be/