Beijing considering antitrust suit against Microsoft? (UPDATE)
As I was pining for the good ol' days of predatory Microsoft, I read that the Jekyll side of Microsoft never really left. From All Things D:
In a status report filed with Federal antitrust regulators yesterday, Microsoft said it had done much to comply with its 2002 antitrust consent decree....
In the states, perhaps. But apparently not in Asia. Because not 24 hours later, China's State Intellectual Property Office said it's investigating the software giant for discriminatory pricing. And according to the Shanghai Securities News, it may sue Microsoft under a new antitrust law scheduled to go into effect Aug. 1.
Let me make sure I understand this: China has long benefited from stealing Microsoft's software. Now it's considering suing because Microsoft charges too much for the software it pirates?
Apparently, China's State Intellectual Property Office may be organizing a group of companies to sue Microsoft for using its market power to charge high prices in China, where the cost of Microsoft's software can easily exceed the hardware costs for a new PC.
But isn't this the land of piracy, where Microsoft's software is basically free, whatever the list price may say? Microsoft has used piracy as a strategic weapon in China. It's somewhat ironic to see China complaining about Microsoft's pricing. Does the government have an alternative in mind?
UPDATE: China's anti-piracy agency is now denying an investigation into an antitrust suit against Microsoft, the AP reports.
"Our office has never conducted research on monopoly behavior aimed at any enterprises," the [agency] said. "And at present we have no plan to conduct this work."
Right hand, meet left hand.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
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1. China has long benefited from stealing Microsoft's software. Now it's considering suing because Microsoft charges too much for the software it pirates?
Are you saying NO ONE in China is using legitimate copies of microsoft software?
2. But isn't this the land of piracy where Microsoft's software is basically free, whatever the list price may say?
So you think using pirated software is okay?
3.Microsoft has used piracy as a strategic weapon in China.
And yet people like you keep complaining about China not being effective in stopping piracy.
Conclusion: you are an idiot.
With piracy the government does not earn anything in tax revenues,hence would prefer to reduce piracy. But till the time MS does not reduce prices, piracy will be rampant.
Hence the logic of the government seems to be fare. If MS strategy is to provide pirated copies to home users making then dependent on MS software and then fleece the enterprise users to earn profits, then it is predator pricing and the company should pay the price for that.
- by gcribner June 19, 2008 9:51 AM PDT
- So, it is because Cisco charges to much for their products that a few Chinese companies are stealing their IP and producing routers with counterfeit Cisco chips in them that are sold back to the American market. Damn those American companies for not selling things to the Chinese at extremely low prices and forcing them to become thieves.
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(6 Comments)Maybe Matt is just trying to point out how farcical it is that China is complaining about anti-competitive acts when they themselves have an over flowing closet of skeletons.