EU sanctions theft of intellectual property

Investor's Business Daily:

Microsoft, a company that has enriched millions and provided an immeasurable boost to the global economy, is being treated like a criminal in Europe — which has a funny way of defining justice.

The EU has no monopoly on odd justice, though. We can have a rather twisted sense of fairness at times over here as well. It was one of our own, federal Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who first ordered Microsoft to be broken up in 2000. At least a federal appellate court reversed that ruling.

Not so in Europe. An EU court in Luxembourg ruled Monday against Microsoft's appeal of the European Commission's shakedown of Bill Gates' software giant. It all stems from March 2004, when the EU's unelected bureaucracy fined Microsoft more than $600 million and directed it to share its code with competitors.

Having lost, Microsoft will now be forced to pay tribute for its success and its intellectual property will be confiscated by the state on behalf of the Microsoft's rivals.

No surprise that Reuters Monday described EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes as "jubilant" over the ruling. The American giant is a trophy for crusaders such as Kroes, who now has the legal momentum that is likely to launch takedown efforts against Intel, Rambus, Qualcomm, even Apple and Google.

All of them are American champions, and all are targets.

The justification for the shabby treatment of a company that has done nothing but increase the world's prosperity is that it was too big and too successful....

...

By obsessing on bleeding Microsoft, Jackson and EU judges and regulators didn't notice the growing strength of Apple and Linux, companies that have emerged as vibrant competitors to Microsoft. Apple, which incorporates its own operating system on its computers, sells one of every six laptops sold in the U.S. Linux has made inroads in Microsoft's dominance as Dell, Gateway and Sony are now including Linux operating systems with their computers.

But soon even these trends will be irrelevant. Innovation will take the tech industry beyond operating systems and other software down a path no one could see even a year ago.

Or at least it should. Regulators and lawyers on both sides of the Atlantic who take down big companies because they feel the need to justify their jobs or are guided by a compulsion to shape the world around their ideals are the enemies of innovation.

When the reward of success is legal trouble, punitive fines and a possible company breakup, the incentive to innovate with an eye on growth and profit is curbed.

...

Microsoft's tendency toward predatory competition has been tempered in recent years. Where the company crushed Netscape in the browser market, it has pretty much left Firefox alone. It has also made settlements in the media player area. The EU case strikes me as provincial jealousy more than a real anti trust case. It is providing an avenue for the theft of Microsoft's intellectual property because of a lack of innovation in the EU which is in turn caused by the stifling regulations of the EU. It may wind up denying itself innovative products in the future.