On July 26, 2010, the European Commission announced[1] two separate antitrust investigations into International Business Machines (IBM).
The second case was an investigation begun on the EC's own initiative that looked into IBM's alleged discriminatory behaviour towards competing suppliers of mainframe maintenance services.
In its initial reaction[2] to the EC's decision, IBM said that the allegations had been brought forward by "satellite proxies" of rival Microsoft.
After losing related court cases in the U.S. against IBM, T3 and Neon withdrew their European Commission complaints in August, 2011.
Separately, IBM agreed to provide mainframe spare parts and certain technical information for five years to maintenance firms.