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A EU court is to award its landmark ruling today over Microsoft's challenge to a 2004 antitrust decision by the European Commission, bringing the almost a decade old legal battle to a new climax.

The European Court of First Instance (CFI), the EU's second-highest court based in Luxembourg will deliver its findings today. Though the verdict written by the 13-judge Grand Chamber of the CFI was expected to be hundreds of pages.

As the judges and court officials, bound by an oath of secrecy, kept their lips tight, the outside and even the two parties remained in darkness about the outcome, while both the commission and Microsoft were claiming they stood for innovation and consumer interests.

The case originated in 1998 when the server maker Sun Microsystems complained to the commission that Microsoft was refusing to supply it with interoperability information necessary for its server software to interoperate with Microsoft's dominant PC operating system, triggering the EU's antitrust investigation, which was later broadened to include Microsoft's tying of its own Media Player product with Windows operating system.