On Monday, July 26th, 2010, the European Commission published a press release annoucing it was launching two formal investigations against IBM, whom it suspects of illegal bundling and abuse of dominant position.
Widespread in the computer field, illegal bundled sale refers to the tying of the sale of a good or service (computer hardware for instance) to the purchase of another good or service (for instance computer software) .
With this proceedings, the European Commission starts to tackle this issue, which encourages antitrust practices, limits competition and penalizes the free software sector. Such practices are widely spread, both over professional and mass markets: it is time for the Commision to act upon this topic, especially compared to the French authorities' idleness.