China's anti-piracy bureau has today denied reports that the State Intellectual Property Office is investigating alleged monopolistic practices by software giant Microsoft.
The original report, which appeared in a state-run newspaper, suggested that the office was investigating a number of large software companies, including Microsoft, and that local companies may start to file antitrust lawsuits under new legislation due to come into effect on August 1. The State Intellectual Property Office has, however, dismissed the reports as “seriously untrue”.
The report, published yesterday, June 18, in the Shanghai Securities News, said the investigation would focus on discriminatory pricing of software and the use of a monopoly position in operating system and office software to marginalise local companies. In the report, it was suggested that the cost of the software far exceeded that of the computer on which it runs.
Controversial history
This is not the first time that Microsoft has been linked with an antitrust case, with many companies heavily criticizing its business tactics. Indeed, many have suggested that Bill Gates' company has adopted an approach of “embrace, extend and extinguish”, whereby a competing standard is initially embraced, then a Microsoft alternative is created incompatible to the original, and finally its monopolistic position allows it to extinguish the competitor product.
Nevertheless, Microsoft has consistently and vigorously fought any antitrust case brought against it, with varied success. Earlier this year, the company was criticized for its decision to bundle its media player software with releases of its operating system, prompting a fine from the EU and the demand for a “media player free” version of the OS.
More recently, Microsoft has had to contend with a crumbling share in the Internet browser market, with its own Internet Explorer software facing serious competition from Mozilla Firefox – especially following the public release of Firefox 3.0 yesterday, June 18, which was downloaded a staggering eight million times worldwide during the first 24 hours.