Should an anti-trust authority involve itself in the setting of royalty levels?
The 2004 Decision found that Microsoft’s refusal to supply interoperability information risked eliminating competition in the work group server operating system market. In order to prevent the perpetuation of this abuse of Microsoft’s dominant position, the 2004 Decision requires Microsoft to make available interoperability information on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. In accordance with this requirement, Microsoft has agreed to Pricing Principles on 31 May 2005. The mandate of the Monitoring Trustee explicitly mentions the Pricing Principles as a reference point for his opinions on issues relating to remuneration. The Pricing Principles foresee that: * Microsoft’s pricing must permit implementation in a commercially practicable manner * Microsoft can charge non-nominal prices only for protocol technology that is innovative and * prices for such innovative protocols will reflect the market valuation of comparable technologies. On the basis of these agreed criteria, the Commis
