International legal issues facing/potentially facing Microsoft Corporation.
The spate of legal issues and court battles in the United States that have plagued Microsoft in recent years, notwithstanding, the desire of the company to continue its expansion into the highly lucrative international marketplace is also not without its real and potential legal challenges. Per your request, a cursory review of the subject has been undertaken and summarized in the following pages.
Microsoft has grown substantially over the years into more than simply a provider of software applications for the personal computer (PC) marketplace. Today, the company, through its recent acquisition of Great Plains Software, is not providing enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions to small and mid-size business. Regardless, the company has, for a number of years, been considered a dominant player in the global information technology (IT) arena. Certainly, the changes witnessed in the closing years of the twentieth century, such as the development of the PC, satellites, the cellular telephone, and the Internet (Niermann, et al, 1999, p.1) have, in no small part, been brought about by the contributions made by Microsoft.
With the above technologies, the "IT" sector has grown (and will continue to grow) substantially, is changing quickly, is becoming more complex and pervasive, and is converging the integration of IT with consumer electronics and communications. Microsoft's contribution to the Internet alone has been substantial. Clearly, it is the exploitation of the Internet that fuels the business of Microsoft.
The Internet has certainly changed the manner in which business is transacted. Business to business commerce over the Internet has reached ECU 7 billion in 1997 and by the end of 2002 is forecasted to approach ECU 300 billion. The explosive growth of the Internet and the associated "on-line" transactions has raised many new regulat...