Microsoft decided not to appeal a European Court judgment on Monday, and said it would comply with an anti-trust ruling upheld last month requiring the software maker to share technical information to help other firms connect their products to Windows.

The ruling by the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg last month asserted the European Commission's 2004 order that Microsoft must share its intellectual property with competitors.

Microsoft operarting system software currently runs on more than 90 percent of all personal computers and has about 70 percent of the computer server market. The ruling is intended to allow rival software to run easily on Windows.

As part of the 2004 ruling, Microsoft will reduce its no patent agreement to a single payment of 10,000 euros ($14,260) to all developers the technical information to help the software run more smoothly with Windows.

A patent fee of 0.4 percent of revenues for Microsoft's software code will be charged instead of the original rate of 5.95 percent.

Microsoft