Overview
- Britain’s Competition Appeal Tribunal, which ruled Tuesday, certified a collective claim that sends a Windows Server licensing case against Microsoft toward trial.
- The opt‑out case covers nearly 60,000 UK businesses and seeks up to £2.1 billion over alleged overcharges for running Windows Server on AWS, Google Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud.
- Claimants say Microsoft set higher wholesale prices for Windows Server on rival clouds, which pushed up customer bills and made Azure look cheaper by comparison.
- Microsoft says the claim lacks a workable loss‑calculation method and argues its integrated model can benefit competition, and the company plans to appeal the certification ruling.
- The tribunal said the claim “comfortably passes” the threshold for proceeding, and a formal order due within weeks will set opt‑out deadlines as UK regulators pursue separate licensing probes.