ft.com/techblog

There’s a natural tendency in US business, when things go wrong, to reach for the lawyers. Now, the tech industry can also reach for the regulators.

Microsoft’s momentous loss before the European Court of First Instance in September always seemed likely to open the flood gates for other claims. As we wrote at the time, PSI, a mainframe computer maker that had already been battling Big Blue in the US courts, was an obvious candidate to turn to Brussels for redress.

That has now happened. PSI accuses IBM of "refusing to supply interface information relating to mainframe computers and refusing to license third parties." Opening up the mainframe platform, were it ever to happen, could have big repercussions for IBM, whose profits are still reputed to rest heavily on the technology most closely associated with its name.

Like last week’s complaint against Microsoft from browser maker Opera, this one is really asking the European regulators to test the limits. Does the EC want to get into the business of prising open all (dominant) closed technology platforms? Where does it draw the line? It’s hard to see Brussels wanting to take this fight to many new fronts, but that is where the logic of the Microsoft ruling points.

December 18th, 2007 in Uncategorised | Permalink