Business news with words antitrust+commission+phone. 4 news.

MICROSOFT Corp has agreed to obey key parts of a 2004 antitrust ruling upheld by an appeals court last month, EU regulators said yesterday, cutting royalties for server software rivals and handing information over to open source developers. EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said she reached the deal in a phone call with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in the early hours of the morning, and hoped that "this dark chapter" was now behind them. "As of today, the major issues concerning compliance have been resolved," Kroes said, but cautioned that Microsoft was not completely in the clear because it has ongoing obligations, and the company "should bear this in mind." Kroes said she was sad that it took so long before Microsoft obeyed, years when consumers suffered through lack of choice as rivals were held back from developing better software. "It is a victory day for the consumer ... not the Commission," she said. If the software

BRUSSELS, Belgium Microsoft Corp. agreed to obey key parts of a 2004 antitrust ruling upheld by an appeals court last month, EU regulators said Monday, cutting royalties for rivals and handing information over to open source developers. The world's largest software company said separately that it would not appeal the decision, dropping a challenge a European Commission order that found it guilty of monopoly abuse three years ago. EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes reached the deal in a phone call with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in the early hours of the morning, she said, adding th

THE European Commission yesterday launched an antitrust investigation into US chipmaker Qualcomm for suspected exploitative practices of its patent rights. The European Union's antitrust watchdog said the investigation was opened after leading mobile phone and chipset makers, including Ericsson, Nokia, NEC and Panasonic, lodged complaints. Qualcomm, the world's second-largest chipmaker for cell phones, was allegedly imposing unfair, unreasonable and discriminatory terms and conditions when licensing its intellectual property rights in the WCDMA standards for mobile telephone, which may breach EU competition rules. The WCDMA standard forms part of the 3G (third generation) standard for European mobile phone technology (also referred to as "UMTS"). In a context of standardization, essential patent holders should not be able to exploit the extra power they have gained as a result of having technology based on their patent incorporated in the standard, according to the so-called Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) commitments, the commission said. The complaints also alleged that Qualcomm's exploitative practices could lead to final consumers paying higher handset prices, a slower development of the 3G standard and negative effect on the standard setting process more generally as well as the adoption of the future 4G standard. However, the commission said it has no conclusive proof of an infringement, and signified an in-depth investigation of the case was conducted as a matter of priority. Jonathan Todd, EU spokesman for competition, told reporters it usually takes years to complete an antitrust case, depending on a number of factors, such as the complexity of each case.

The European Commission has launched formal antitrust proceedings after mobile phone manufacturers complained Qualcomm charged far too much for vital technology licenses.