The company will pay a record high fine of €860 million. The American corporation was found guilty of violating EU antitrust laws. Read more from Kommersant FM correspondent Ulyana Malashenko.

The court reduced the scope of the European Commission's claims by €39 million. As a result, Microsoft must pay €860 million for violating EU antitrust laws. Experts call this fine a record high, noted Georgy Voronkov, head of the analytical department of Management Company Bin Finam Group.

“If you look at the practice of European antitrust authorities, they very harshly assess any losses associated with intangible assets. The fine that is now imposed on Microsoft, in my opinion, ranks second among the largest fines in the history of IT companies: in 2009 Intel paid €1.1 billion, that is, a precedent has already been created,” he recalled.

The reason for the lawsuit was Microsoft's refusal to provide competitors with access to the codes of its operating systems for the development of products compatible with them. The entertainment sector suffered the most then, experts say. The litigation has been going on for several years now. Microsoft is simply trying to achieve a reduction in the amount of payments, says Ivan Kabulaev, managing director of the independent analytical agency Investkafe.

“In fact, this is a fine for failure to comply with a court decision. The roots of this dispute go back to 2004, it was then that the EU competition authority sued Microsoft for the first time. The company was awarded a fine of €500 million, they are constantly appealing. Access to the source code of certain components manufacturers has already been done. Therefore, now we are talking, rather, about the financial plane,” he noted.

Microsoft has already announced that they intend to appeal the court's decision.

The corporation's revenue for 2010 amounted to $62.5 billion, and net profit was almost $19 billion.

Microsoft paid for its intractability