Today, the WSJ reported that Adobe is threatening an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft in Europe because Adobe doesn’t want Microsoft to use PDF in MS Office. So why is Adobe going to Europe?
They are both American companies, so it might seem pretty strange. That is, until you realize that the Europeans are much more sympathetic to such claims and seem to love to sick it to Microsoft and the Americans who run it. If Adobe really does complain in Europe, that will be a VERY obvious case of forum shopping. This is an unfortunate development for consumers and technology entrepreneurs.
Specifically, Adobe asked Microsoft to remove new PDF functions from Microsoft Office and to charge users for the service if it can be downloaded. Adobe gives the software away for free, and Apple and Open Office along with about 1800 companies, have already implemented the specs. So why can’t Microsoft do it? The argument that their bigness requires different rules just doesn’t hold. Microsoft is NOT a monopoly and is facing huge threats on a number of fronts such as from Google and Yahoo. Anyone who doesn’t realize that needs to wake up and smell the coffee.
Remember the last time MS faced antitrust charges here in the US? Charges of predatory pricing and tying were used and predictions that Internet Explorer (IE) would dominate forever abounded. Only a few short years later, IE has lost ground, being replaced by browsers like Mozilla, Safari, and Opera, and a bunch of others.
Government should not pick winners and losers in the marketplace and Adobe, who once welcomed Microsoft’s entry into the PDF space, would be better off spending its time innovating rather than litigating.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
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