Lest we forget, one of the major consequences of the anti-trust decision against Microsoft was that it made MS afraid to innovate in the web browser area (that was where it got pounded so heavily in the courts). Since it had a 90+% market share in browsers at the time MS decided there wasn't much reason to continue developing IE and they effectively stopped development. It wasn't until Firefox started to gain popularity that MS began to pour serious effort into updating IE.
In short: the anti-trust lawsuits against MS are at least partially responsible for IE6 retaining significant market share for such a long period of time.
So you claim that wasn't motivated by slowing the development of browsers, which in turn slowed the moving of applications to the Web?
(Which was the reason that Microsoft used its monopoly to kill Netscape and got into hot water from the beginning.)
Edit: Consider how "well" Microsoft followed directives from the EU. It is a bit hilarious to claim that MS stopped developing something without even court orders and threats of being fined billions...
In short: the anti-trust lawsuits against MS are at least partially responsible for IE6 retaining significant market share for such a long period of time.