U.S. criticizes Microsoft ruling

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U.S. criticizes Microsoft ruling

A U.S. Justice Department official yesterday criticized Korea’s Fair Trade Commission for its anti-trust decision against Microsoft, the American software giant, on Wednesday. J. Bruce McDonald, a deputy assistant attorney general, said in a statement shortly after the ruling here, “Sound anti-trust policy should protect competition, not competitors, and must avoid chilling innovation and competition even by ‘dominant’ companies.” That was very similar to the department’s reaction after a similar ruling against Microsoft by the European Union in March 2004, suggesting that the motivation for the statement was as much political ― a show of support for a U.S. company by its government ― as substantive. But whatever the motivation, Korean regulators reacted with irritation. Kim Byung-bae, the head of the commission’s competition bureau, told the JoongAng Daily, “Considering that the authorities in competition issues should respect each other’s decisions, the statement by the U.S. Justice Department is exceptional.” He contrasted it with Seoul’s silence when U.S. regulators found in October that two Korean chipmakers had engaged in price-fixing. The commission fined Microsoft on Wednesday and ordered it to offer two new versions of its Windows operating system in Korea, one stripped of instant messaging and media player software and the other with those features but containing Web links to sites offering downloads of competing software. Mr. Kim saw some substantive reasons for the U.S. criticism, however. “It seems like an expression of fears that U.S. companies will not be able to use consistent management strategies in different countries,” he said. “Microsoft is in a situation now where it will have to provide separate versions of the Windows operating systems for different countries such as the United States, Europe and Korea.” by Seo Ji-eun
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