The anticipated legal action against ISO has just begun, starting with the BSI. If you have been following this Web site for a while, then you probably know that there is plenty of concrete evidence of corruption around the world. Microsoft loves to vainly deny this, joined by ISO and business partners that send away semi-edited letter templates (it's not a crime to deny and lie about wrongdoing unless you do this under a sworn court testimony).

Mind you, Microsoft's long history, which filled to the rim with antitrust stories, has many times revealed that Microsoft systematically lied even to the courts at times, not just to the press. But anyway, today's story is about the BSI, which is not Microsoft but on the face of things is heavily influenced by it. Articles about the legal action include the following pair:

1. UK standards body taken to court over OOXML

The British Standards Institution has been taken to court by a group of Unix users in an attempt to get the standards body to recant its approval of Microsoft's Office Open XML document format.

The UK Unix & Open Systems User Group (UKUUG) said on Thursday that the British Standards Institution's (BSI's) controversial decision to vote for approval of OOXML in a recent International Organization for Standardization (ISO) ballot followed a flawed decision-making process.

2. BSI faces High Court challenge over OOXML U-turn

OSC director Mark Taylor told The Register that the UKUUG and chums were "very confident that the BSI has a case to answer". He claimed that "they haven’t followed procedures and we want them to explain their controversial actions".

However, even if legal action against the BSI leads to the UK standards body being forced, in the form of mandatory orders, to withdraw its vote to the ISO, its impact could be muted.

Taylor agreed: "Should the BSI be asked to remove its vote, that in itself probably won’t change the outcome."

He added that the group hopes to see individuals in other countries mount similar challenges against national standards bodies in order to force the ISO to "sit up and take notice".

If ISO (and Microsoft) believes that it has a headache now, it doesn't yet know what's in store. To echo the words of Neelie Kroes:

"If you flee the rules, you will be caught. And it will cost you dearly."

--Neelie Kroes (announcing the latest Microsoft fine)

Europe is not the only region to have gotten angry and ignored Microsoft's OOXML by the way. This good article about South Africa [via Simon Phipps] says a little more about the nation's disregard for what has been more of a political and technical fiasco than the patent-encumbered format proposal which it is. The next few months promise to be interesting because with Microsoft lobbyists gently threatening governments it's clear that the monopoly will play dirty to shelter its cash cows. ⬆