It is also being forced to pay up to 80 percent of the European Commission's legal costs in taking the action.
The European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg today backed the European Commission's 2004 decision that ordered the U.S. company to disclose proprietary data and strip music and video software from a version of Windows.
Microsoft can appeal today's decision at the European Court of Justice, the EU's highest court. The company has argued that the EU is pursuing the illegal disclosure of trade secrets and wants a veto over features in Windows, which runs on about 95 percent of the world's personal computers. The judgment bolsters probes by Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes of Intel Corp., Rambus Inc. and Qualcomm Inc.
"It's a big loss for Microsoft,'' said Nicholas Economides, a law professor at New York University. "It will make Microsoft sell some products with different functionality in the U.S. and Europe.''
