Microsoft stops 'unfair but legal' Japanese practices

After antitrust investigations in the US and Europe, it seems Microsoft might be learning a valuable lesson in dealing with the competition police: give them exactly what they want.

An investigation launched by the Japanese Fair Trade Commission that saw Microsoft's Tokyo headquarters raided is aiming to examine the issue of whether patent-related provisions in the Redmond giant's contracts with hardware makers were unfair.

According to a statement from Microsoft, the provisions in question have previously received the thumbs up from antitrust types in Europe. "This specific provision was reviewed and passed muster under a competition law assessment conducted by the European Commission in 2001. The US Department of Justice reviewed the provision in the mid-1990s", the statement says, adding that "Microsoft believes that the patent-related provision is lawful under Japanese, US and EU law."

Nevertheless, the company has decided to ditch the provision in question - which essentially forbade OEMs from suing Microsoft over patent infringement - "Microsoft recently reviewed this provision again after receiving comments on it from some of its OEM customers. Microsoft has decided that, given its focus on improving customer satisfaction, it would delete the provision in its entirety from the next round of OEM contracts" later this year, the statement said.

The investigation is still ongoing and Microsoft has said it intends to cooperate fully with the Fair Trade Commission.

Japan is the world's third largest PC market and, unsurprisingly, dominated by the Windows operating system.

While the parallel investigation in the EU has seen Microsoft making a few paltry concessions, it seems that this time, Redmond intends to woo regulators by bending over backwards to comply.

James Governor, principal analyst at Redmonk, said that he believed Microsoft "probably has enough on its plate without opening another front in Asia. The regulators can be pretty brutal," he told silicon.com. "They may have decided discretion is the better part of valour."

"The decision to remove the provision is realpolitik from Microsoft. Just because they feel it's legal, doesn't mean they should continue to do it. They need to pick their battles and their key battle is what Microsoft is allowed to bundle with its operating system," Governor said.