EU court upholds billion-dollar Microsoft fine

A European court upheld a billion-dollar EU fine against Microsoft on Wednesday but reduced the penalty by tens of millions of euros. The General Court, the European Union's second highest, dismissed Microsoft's bid to annul the penalty but cut the US software giant's fine by 39 million euros to 860 million euros ($1.07 billion). The fine was imposed by the European Commission in 2008 after Microsoft failed to comply with an order to share product information with rivals so that their software can work with the ubiquitous Windows operating system. The court, in a statement, said it "essentially upholds the Commission's decision imposing a periodic penalty payment on Microsoft for failing to allow its competitors access to interoperability information on reasonable terms."