Microsoft marks 10 years of antitrust action

The European Union's ruling against Microsoft last month? Or was that the outcome to the case involving Netscape? Neither: try Novell's suit over the DR-DOS operating system in 1994, which followed four years of investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice. Since that first serious brush with regulators, Microsoft has been perpetually in and out of court, accruing fines and settlement payments in the billions of dollars.

Losing or settling case after case, Microsoft has tested the bounds of antitrust and patent infringement law, with little evidence that its power has waned or that its behaviour has been substantially changed. Rivals and many legal experts say antitrust law itself has come out the worse for the skirmishes, while Microsoft appears to have built the ongoing scrutiny, fines and remedies into a strategy showing scant sign of reform. Even last month's tough stance by the European Commission may not be able to slow the giant.

"I can't see how [the courts] have learned," said Marc Schildkraut, an antitrust attorney at Howrey & Simon in Washington, D.C., who led the FTC's early 90s investigation of Microsoft's business practices. "They're confronting problems (on a case-by-case basis) that they haven't been able to solve in any meaningful way."

A decade of investigations and lawsuits involving Microsoft's business practices has outlined a pattern of high-pressure business deals and unceasing expansionary aims. The company's core strategy has been to make its OS -- MS-DOS, then Windows -- as ubiquitous as possible, while continually adding features that often started off as separate products developed outside Microsoft. In some cases, rivals have charged abuse of market, while others have claimed Microsoft has infringed on their patented technology without payments.

For years, the company has settled most of these complaints, while staunchly defending its right to add new features to its products. In 2003, the price tag for these court actions skyrocketed close to $2bn (£1.1bn). The agreement with Sun Microsystems earlier this month added another $1.6bn ($700m to settle antitrust claims and $900m over patent claims). And Monday's settlement with InterTrust over patent infringement charges tacked on $440m.