INFORMATION SOCIETY : MICROSOFT BACK IN THE HOT SEAT.

Two new investigations have been opened against the US software giant Microsoft, once again suspected of abuse of its dominant position, announced the European Commission on 15 January. This follows just four months after the EU executive's victory before the EU Court of Justice.

This time the investigation concerns Microsoft's Office suite, which in particular contains the word processing and spreadsheet software Word and Excel and the web browser Internet Explorer.

At the end of three and a half years of battle, the EU's Court of First Instance had confirmed, on 17 September, the bulk of the Commission's analysis into the group's abuse of dominant position as well as a record fine of 497 million.

The Commission does not have new proof of infringements. But these investigations respond to two complaints respectively introduced by the association ECIS, which unites competitors such as Adobe Systems, IBM, Nokia, Opera, Oracle, RealNetworks and Sun Microsystems, and the Norwegian software manufacturer Opera Software.

ECIS has accused Microsoft of illegally refusing to publish technical information allowing dialogue between "a broad range" of its products (including information related to its Office suite and a number of its server products) and its competitors' products (this is known as the interoperability' principle).

Opera Software is accusing Microsoft of abusing its dominant position in the web browser market, by automatically tying its Internet Explorer product to its Windows operating system, which is installed on 90% of the PCs on the planet. It is therefore asking the...