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BRUSSELS, Belgium – The European Union fined the software giant Microsoft Corp. a record $1.3 billion Wednesday for charging unreasonable amount for providing software information to its competitors.

Regulators of EU said that the company imposed “unfair prices” till last October to software developers, who wanted to develop products, which is well matched with the Windows operating system. This is the largest fine ever charged for an individual company.

Microsoft immediately responded to this issue by saying that the problem has been solved and the company was making its products more open to all.

The fine was imposed with in a week after Microsoft had announced that it is ready to share more information about its technology and products with a view to make it work better with competitor’s software and to meet the demands of European antitrust regulators.

But Neelie Kroes, the Competition Commissioner of EU remained unconvinced and said Microsoft was under investigation in two additional cases. “Talk is cheap, breaking the laws is expensive.” said Kroes

The actions of Microsoft had muffled new innovations and affected millions of people and software developers around the world, said Kroes. She called the record $1.3 billion fine “a reasonable imposition to a chain of quite unreasonable actions.”

“We thought of charging as high as $2.23 billion (1.5 billion euros),” she said.

“In the 50 years of EU competition policy, Microsoft was the one and only company, which was fined by the commission for the failure to abide by the antitrust decision,” said Neelie Kroes, the EU Competition Commissioner.

Microsoft fought tooth-and-nail against a March 2004 decision that led to a $613 million fine and an order that the company has to share interoperability information with its competitors within 120 days. The company lost the case in September and it was fined $357 million in July 2006 for the failure to comply that order.

The EU claimed that Microsoft’s action of holding back the imperative interoperability information for desktop PC software is an effort to suppress its competitors and to create monopoly.

Initially Microsoft charged 3.87 percent for royalty and 2.98 percent for information license. The EU warned the company that the rates were unfair and unreasonable. Fearing of penalty, two months Microsoft reduced the patent rate to 0.7 percent and the information license to 0.5 percent but only in Europe, leaving the prices of other countries unchanged.

“I hope today’s decision will be a dark chapter in the history of Microsoft” said Kroes.

“Microsoft has been misusing its powerful market position even after the commission’s March 2004 decision requiring it to change its practices,” Kroes told journalists.

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