Intel gets boost as case is sent for review

LUXEMBOURG: Intel Corp won a boost in its eight-year fight with the European Union over a 1.06 billion-euro (US$1.26bil) fine in a case that could have ramifications for a list of disputes involving US tech giants including Google to Apple Inc.

The EU Court of Justice said in a binding ruling in Luxembourg that a lower tribunal had to re-examine Intel’s appeal and criticised the judges for failing in an earlier decision to examine arguments put for- ward by the company.

The EU General Court, the bloc’s second-highest tribunal, in its 2014 ruling “was required to examine all of Intel’s arguments” regarding a test to check whether the rebates system used by the company “was capable of having foreclosure effects,” the court said.

It ordered the lower court to examine “whether the rebates at issue were capable of restricting competition.”

Intel is among the few companies to have continued a battle against a European Commission fine all the way to the top EU court. The Brussels-based antitrust watchdog accused the company of using discounts to push out Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), a decision backed by a lower EU court in 2014.

Giving hope to the chipmaker, Nils Wahl, an adviser at the top tribunal, said in October that the earlier ruling mistakenly dismissed the need for regulators to prove that Intel’s payments to manufacturers – or rebates – for buying its chips were illegal.

The EU’s investigation found that Intel impeded competition by giving rebates to computer makers from 2002 until 2005 on the condition that they buy at least 95% of chips for PCs from Intel.

It said Intel imposed “restrictive conditions” for the remaining 5%, supplied by AMD, which struggled to overcome Intel’s hold on the market for processors that run the devices.