Microsoft Corp

Microsoft Corp. said it would spend $1 billion expanding its main campus to make room for staff for new projects. The company said it would buy seven buildings in Redmond, Wash., and construct seven others, adding 3.1 million square feet of work space. Between those additions and some leased space, Microsoft will add capacity for 12,000 people. Microsoft plans to boost its workforce by as much as 5,000 worldwide this year, with about 40% of the hiring in the U.S., it said.

Microsoft Corp. was accused by a group representing IBM Corp., Oracle Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. of abusing its dominance in products such as Word and Excel. The European Committee for Interoperability Systems, which represents the three companies and six others, said it filed a complaint with the European Commission and asked it to start a probe against Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft.

Microsoft Corp. vowed to appeal a decision by South Korea's antitrust regulators concluding that the U.S. company had abused its market dominance and ordering it to offer alternative versions of Windows. The Korea Fair Trade Commission released a report formalizing last year's ruling against Microsoft that the Redmond, Wash.-based company's practice of tying certain software to its flagship Windows operating systems was an abuse of its dominant position in the market.

Microsoft Corp. said that it planned to soon double or triple shipments of its Xbox 360 video game console to address shortages that have crimped game sales across the industry. The announcement came a week after rival Sony Corp. announced that it would delay the launch of its much-anticipated PlayStation 3 until November to finalize standards for the Blue-ray disc drive, a next-generation DVD player that will be included in PS3.

Microsoft Corp. is getting U.S. government support for its complaint that European Union antitrust regulators have denied access to evidence needed for the company's defense. Microsoft's complaint raises "substantial concerns," U.S. diplomats in Brussels said in a memo sent to the European Commission this week. The U.S.' EU mission is led by C. Boyden Gray, a former White House counsel who lobbied on behalf of Microsoft during its battle with the U.S. Justice Department.

When Microsoft Corp. learned recently that a software flaw had been made public and could prompt Internet attacks, it ordered a team to devote all its time to fixing the flaw and making the repair work with other products. Microsoft says that is the approach customers want and expect, but some computer security experts complain that the company's traditional method, which could take days or weeks, doesn't help fast enough.

A federal judge rejected a bid by Microsoft Corp. to get letters that might help it fight European Union antitrust allegations and avoid more than $2 million in daily fines. Microsoft's subpoena against Novell Inc. "would circumvent and undermine the law of the European Community concerning how a litigant may obtain third-party documents," U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf in Boston wrote. Microsoft must comply with EU procedures and not seek help in U.S. courts, Wolf said.

A U.S. court in New York quashed a Microsoft Corp. subpoena for IBM Corp.'s documents related to the software company's European antitrust case. Judge Colleen McMahon said Microsoft's subpoena amounted to a "blatant end run" on the European Commission's authority. The judge said that the Brussels-based regulator strongly opposed Microsoft's request, and that enforcing such a subpoena could harm U.S. sovereignty if a foreign court were used to obtain documents in a U.S. proceeding. Redmond, Wash.

Microsoft Corp. hired Steve Berkowitz, head of IAC/InterActiveCorp's Ask.com, to lead its MSN unit, which is battling search leader Google Inc. for Web users. Berkowitz will be senior vice president of Microsoft's online business group, responsible for marketing, sales and business development at the MSN unit and Windows Live, Microsoft said. He replaces David Cole. Microsoft is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on its MSN Search to attract users and challenge Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc.

The European Commission forced the world's largest software maker to offer a product no one wanted and virtually no one bought, Microsoft Corp. told the EU's second-highest court Monday as it began trying to overturn a landmark antitrust ruling against it.