South Korea's antitrust regulator has agreed to allow Microsoft to drop its appeal against the agency's landmark ruling, ending on Wednesday a two-year dispute. The Korean Fair Trade Commission ruled in 2005 that Microsoft had abused its dominant market position, fining it $35.43 million (32.5 billion won) and ordering it to separate its instant messaging program from the Windows operating system.
The commission rejected Microsoft's appeal in May 2006, and then the company took the case to the Seoul High Court.
After the court rejected a stay, Microsoft said last year it had made changes to its Windows Vista operating system to meet all of the commission's demands and, within the past week, told the court it wants to abandon the appeal.
"We have decided to agree to Microsoft's request to drop the appeal, given that the company has acted on our request" to separate the instant messaging program, the regulator said in a statement.
Microsoft also suffered a decisive antitrust defeat in September when a European Union court upheld a landmark ruling that the world's largest software maker had abused its dominant market position to crush rivals. Microsoft has said it has not decided whether to appeal the EU case.
