TAIWAN ACCEPTS MICROSOFT SETTLEMENT OFFER.

AsiaPulse News, February, 2003

TAIPEI, Feb 28 Asia Pulse - The Cabinet-level Fair Trade Commission decided Thursday to accept an offer by Microsoft to settle a dispute with the software giant over its alleged unfair trade practices.

Under the terms of the offer, Microsoft agreed to cut prices on its 13 software products by an average of 26.7 per cent.

The products covered by the settlement include Windows XP, Office XP, Excel and Word.

Compared with their prices in May, 2002, when the commission initiated a probe into Microsoft's suspected price fixing policy in Taiwan, the products will be priced from 13.2 per cent to 54.5 per cent lower.

Microsoft also agreed to disclose some of the source code of its Windows system to allow local software producers to create their...