Thirteen judges signalled bad luck for so-called superdominant companies yesterday and confirmed Europe as the world’s most hostile arena for private sector titans.

It will not have escaped corporate America’s notice that Microsoft’s humiliating legal defeat came in Luxembourg at the hands of the Brussels-based European Commission, over a case originally brought by a rival American company, Sun Microsystems.

Microsoft has survived other attempts to break its iron grip on the PC and server software markets in America, Japan and South Korea.

However, Europe’s judges backed the Continent’s regulators over an aggressive market intervention strategy that, according to some observers, will provoke an antitrust lawyers’ bonanza.

There is no doubt that Neelie Kroes, the European Competition Commissioner, will have been emboldened by the success of the strategy begun by her predecessor, Mario Monti, of Italy, back in 1998.

Even though the reasoning of the European Court of First Instance was tied tightly to the facts of the Microsoft case, there are bound to be far-reaching ramifications for the technology sector and beyond.

Companies that dominate particular IT sectors, such as Apple, Intel and IBM, will feel more vulnerable today, if only for Ms Kroes’s repeated assertion that Microsoft’s 95 per cent share of the PC software market was far too high.

The former Dutch Transport Minister did not put an ideal figure on market share, but even the suggestion that a high figure could trigger antitrust investigations, and the legal expense that that entails, will unsettle executives of any super-successful company doing business in the European Union. Fines totalling €2 billion (£1.4 billion) have been given this year by the Commission to companies found guilty of running cartels.

Times Recommends

• Lies and cover-up at MG Rover exposed by report
• High oil prices push manufacturing costs up
• Primark founder steps down as chief executive