Software giant Microsoft Corp. tries to overturn an anti-trust decision of the European Commission in March 2004 as a European Union (EU) court in Luxembourg began to hear Microsoft's legal challenge on Monday.

The European Commission, the executive body of the EU, fined Microsoft 497 million euros (614 million U.S. dollars) and ordered Microsoft to open source code to allow competitors to develop software interoperable with Microsoft Windows.

The five-day hearing will offer no immediate solution to the dispute, with a decision unlikely until the end of the year at the earliest.

Microsoft lawyer Jean-Francois Bellis said in his opening statement that the commission made "fundamental errors of fact and reasoning" in its decision two years ago.

The commission ruled that Microsoft abused its dominant market position by bundling Windows Media Player with its Windows XP operating system.

Bellis said Microsoft's Windows XP version without Windows Media Player was a failure at the market.

But commission lawyer Per Hellstrom said Microsoft's arguments were irrelevant because consumers did not have real freedom of choice over the media software they are offered.

Apart from the 497-million-euro fine, the commission also threatened in December 2005 to impose a daily fine of up to 2 million euros (2.47 million dollars) unless Microsoft complies with the March 2004 ruling.

Microsoft, under pressure from the threat, provided a technical manual in late January, which EU experts later labeled as "totally useless."

Source: Xinhua