Dr Philip Marsden
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September 17, 2007
Legal analysis: gloomy prospects for European innovation
"Effectively, the Commission is saying that the leading player must handicap itself to enable others to have a chance of winning".
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Intellectual monopoly is not necessary for innovation and as a practical matter is damaging to growth, prosperity and liberty. More on this look at "Against Intellectual Monopoly" by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine
Robert Pastierovic, Bratislava, Slovakia
Marsden = anti-antitrust submarine.
sage, sage,
I think the view that this will restrict innovation in Europe is mixing apples with oranges. What we are talking here that one giant in the market did not get away with putting such restrictions in his system that others did not even have an economic base to try to innovate. With so much market power in Microsoft due to the widespread use of its system, any new application which needs to use the system is heavily restricted. That may be the case in regards of Apple as well but Apple does not control more than 80% of the worlds computer systems running.
Ludwig, Irvine, CA, USA
I'd completely disagree with the question about innovation in Europe. If European technologists look towards the Asian software powerhouses using Open Source, they'd soon discover 250,000 projects on the go with Sourceforge and ELance and a community of developers running into the millions - along with much of the web.
The Open Community argument that software is free or low cost, and you charge for the applications or services you enable has resulted in many huge successes, not least is Google and e-commerce. With Microsoft, the word 'Dominant' should be replaced with 'Predatory'. It might be worth checking out some of the Education Authority contracts Microsoft has forces through, particularly in New Zealand and Scandinavia.
Chris Clark, Ruislip Manor, Middlesex
Dr. Marsden own words states the real question. "..to ensure that there remains an effective competitive structure on the market." That is the question, competition drives market economies.
If there is no competition, the surviving company is a monopoly by definition. And monopolies are not good, generally, for the economy. If the company uses "illegal" monopoly power, then it is abusing the market economy.
So the real question is, Dr. Marsden, is there effective competitive structure on the market with Microsoft in this situation?
Andrew DeWitt, Oshkosh, WI, USA
Come on. Just because a U.S. court failed to break up Microsoft, in the same way Ma Bell was broken up, is no reason to condemn the judgement of the European Court. To say that "the leading player must handicap itself to enable others to have a chance of winning" is WAY off base. Microsoft has to stop killing great technologies so that they can prosper. I have no problem with Microsoft being a successful tech company. I have a problem when it intentionally kills Dr. DOS, true Object Oriented Technology, Netscape, BeOS, Linux, etc, etc, etc. I'm tired of MS technology that doesn't work.
If the U.S. courts won't solve the problem, then maybe the European courts can help. Microsoft isn't a Tech Giant... It's a Tech Monopoly focused more on killing competition than on innovation.
Kevin P, Phoenix, Arizona