January 26, 2009 by Matt Thomas
We reported recently that Microsoft had been charged with breaking competition laws by the European Commission and were liable for an extremely hefty fine as a result. Well, it would seem that the EC isn’t done with the tech industry – IBM may be next.
Small, Florida-based mainframe maker, T3 technologies, last week claimed to have filed an antitrust complaint with the EC against IBM. T3, it seems, are unhappy with IBM for declining to sell T3 customers the z/OS operating system, thereby rendering their mainframes irrelevant and isolated.
It seems the EC is listening. To paraphrase one of their spokesmen, the EC were already looking into the issue of competition and fairness in the mainframe market. The investigation is not, at this stage, a formal one though there is nothing stopping it becoming one if they feel there have been abuses or violations of EU laws.
If Microsoft is anything to go by, IBM might have to dust off the company cheque-book in the near future. However, the computer giant is remaining bullish in the face of T3’s allegations, rejecting their claims out of hand and going as far as to accuse the small company of violating their intellectual property.
It’ll be interesting to see how this one goes after the Microsoft precedent.
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