Luxembourg, 07/07/2005 (Agence Europe) The Microsoft case is to move from the fourth chamber of the Court of First Instance, which is chaired by Judge Legal, to a complex nature formation of 13 judges chaired by Bo Vesterdorf, the president of the Court. Officially, this transfer was decided upon given the difficulties of the case, which is one of the criteria which can be used to move a case up to the largest chamber.
Unofficially, it was to give an image of impartiality to the debate further to the stances taken by Hubert Legal, president of the fourth chamber and judge-rapporteur on the Microsoft case. The dossier will be given to a different judge-rapporteur.
Hubert Legal expressed decisive views in an editorial of a French magazine, in which he criticised the collaborators of the judges, the public auditors, "Ayatollahs of free enterprise" and the judges themselves, some of whom were over-zealous in the "competition" dossiers, and others of whom allowed themselves to be manipulated by their public auditors due to their limited and mastery of the French language, which is the language of deliberations at the Court (see EUROPE 8979).
Microsoft is calling for the decision of the European Commission of 24 March 2004, forcing the company to make certain information available and to sell a "Windows" system without "Media Player", and inflicting a fine upon it, to be overturned.