The Legal Blues Continue for These Tech Companies: Apple Inc. (AAPL), Microsoft Corporation (MSFT)

According to the commission’s investigation, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) failed to give this choice to approximately 15 million users between May 2011 and July 2012. Reports also indicate that this is the first time that the EU’s antitrust authority fined a party for not meeting its obligations. The total fine amounts to a mammoth 11% percent of Microsoft’s quarterly profits and has a net effect of $0.087 per share.  The software giant has already taken responsibility for the incident and cited technical issues as the reason for this massive misstep.

Bottom line

The last couple of weeks have not been good for US technology companies when it comes to lawsuits. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) will continue its legal war against other handheld manufacturers, but I believe designs of competitors are becoming more unique now because other companies are also spending more on R&D. Apple will also have to increase its R&D spending, as it has one of the lowest R&D/Sales ratios in the industry. Meanwhile, Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) should closely monitor the fines levied against Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)because the search giant is already involved in a dispute with the EU commission over ranking of search engine results.

The article The Legal Blues Continue for These Tech Companies originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Mohsin Saeed.

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