Intel wins big in long-running antitrust case with European Commission

BRUSSELS (CN) — The Court of Justice for the European Union handed Intel a victory Thursday, ending a nearly two-decade-long fight between the U.S. chipmaker and EU regulators that included a record $1.14 billion antitrust fine.

“The Court of Justice dismisses the commission’s appeal, thereby upholding the judgment of the General Court,” the bloc’s top court court said in a statement affirming a lower court’s decision to scrap the penalty.

Intel said in a statement that it’s “pleased with the judgment delivered by the Court of Justice of the European Union today and to finally put this part of the case behind us.”

The European Commission fined Intel in May 2009, arguing the company had abused its dominant position in the computer chip market by giving rebates to computer makers Dell, Hewlett-Packard, NEC and Lenovo in exchange for providing the majority of the companies’ CPUs.

The 1.06 billion euro fine ($1.14 billion) was dismissed by the Luxembourg-based General Court, Europe’s second-highest, in 2022, for conditional rebates and payments but not regarding naked restrictions, which serve only to limit competition.

That ruling was a significant setback for EU antitrust regulators.

“The commission’s analysis is incomplete and does not make it possible to establish to the requisite legal standard that the rebates at issue were capable of having or likely to have, anticompetitive effects,” judges said two years ago.

The EU executive argued Intel had engaged in two illegal practices in the market for x86 central processing units, for which the company held a 70% global market share between October 2002 and December 2007.

European regulators, who generally fight rebates offered by dominant companies on the grounds of unfair competition, said the practice was an attempt to block U.S. CPU producer Advanced Micro Devices.

The European Commission then appealed the decision on conditional rebates to the Court of Justice of the European Union, which resulted in Thursday’s ruling.

In September 2023, the commission re-affirmed a €376.4 million (about $406.8 million) fine on Intel solely for the naked restrictions practices. Intel filed to annul the lower fine to the General Court in December 2023. That case is still pending.