Microsoft announced today that it would not appeal the decision recently made against it in the European Union anti-trust case. After nearly ten years, the company has agreed to comply with decisions forcing it to lower royalty fees on interoperability information.

I had predicted that the company would appeal in the post I made originally dealing with their loss of the case, citing not the immediate damage of the decision as the major factor, but rather the precedent that the decision would set for regulators. I can only imagine that corporate counsel decided that the case was unwinnable, because indeed, EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, according to this Seattle Times article, seizes on that fact:

Kroes said the EU order set a precedent for Microsoft's future behavior for other areas - such as its Office software and its new Vista operating system.

If there was a reason for Microsoft to fight on this, it would be to protect those parts of the business from future regulation of this sort. If they didn't, considering what they stand to lose on their core revenue generating products, it must have been a real dog of a case. Kroes' intimations that future regulation is imminent only reinforces this.

Microsoft's extremely brief statement on the decision can be found here.