Microsoft has lost its appeal against a fine imposed on the software giant by European regulators who found the company guilty of abusing its dominant market position.
In a ruling this morning the European Union's (EU) second-highest court upheld a 2004 ruling that Microsoft was guilty of squeezing out market rivals by selling the Windows operating system with its own media player software.
The European Commission subsequently ordered Microsoft to make a version of the Windows system available without the software and told the company to ensure that its products could operate with other computer systems through the sharing of information with rival software firms.
Following an initial €497 million (£344 million) fine imposed against Microsoft as part of the original ruling, an additional fine of €280.5 million (£195 million) was later handed to the company after it failed to comply with the Commission's decision.
Today's ruling by the European Court of First Instance said that it was "beyond dispute" that consumers were unable to acquire the Windows operating system without simultaneously acquiring Microsoft's media player.
The Luxembourg court also noted that the European Commission was "correct to conclude that the work group server operating systems of Microsoft's competitors must be able to interoperate with Windows domain architecture on an equal footing with Windows operating systems if they are to be capable of being marketed viably".
However the panel of 13 judges did reject a small part of the Commission's ruling, throwing out a requirement that had insisted upon the establishment of an independent monitoring trustee to monitor Microsoft's compliance.
Microsoft, which did not immediately respond to the ruling, now has two months to appeal at the European Court of Justice.
Analysts say that the ruling will be welcomed by the European Commission, which has recently lost several high-profile anti-trust cases.
It is also thought that the key ruling could change the way that Microsoft does business in the future.
Digg 
Delicious 
Reddit 
StumbleUpon 
Google 
Technorati 
Netvouz