Tying Law in Microsoft I and II: The Secret Art of Magic?

Posted by D. Daniel Sokol

Nicolas Petit, University of Liege and Norman Neyrinck, University of Liege ask Tying Law in Microsoft I and II: The Secret Art of Magic?

ABSTRACT: This paper seeks to uncover an inconvenient truth. The Microsoft decisions are not tying cases. Rather, the two decisions taken by the EU Commission against Microsoft – i.e. the Windows Media Player (“WMP”) case of 2004 and the Internet Explorer (“IE”) case of 2009 – mark departures from conventional tying analysis (I). First, they deviate from standard tying law in that in the Microsoft cases, a key component of abusive tying, namely coercion, is missing (II). Second, the Microsoft decisions share many analogies with “essential facility” cases. One may thus question to what extent the Commission has not pursued disguised refusal to supply cases (III).