Intel Wins Antitrust Lawsuit Against European Commission After 15 Years

• After 15 long years, Intel has finally won the lawsuit against the European Commission. It will no longer have to pay the 1.06 billion fine.
• This decision is final and binding and it cannot be challenged in the court.
• The lawsuit accused Intel of tactically offering discounts to popular PC makers so that they buy its CPUs. However, the court didn't find enough evidence to sustain this claim.

Intel has finally won the iconic antitrust case against the European Commission, after 15 long years. On Thursday (October 24, 2024), the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) passed the verdict in favor of Intel, saving the company from a massive fine of 1.06 billion.

The case goes back to 2009 when Intel was accused of abusing its dominant global position to get an advantage over its smaller rivals.

For example, it was offering discounts to popular PC makers such as Dell, HP, NEC, and Lenovo so that they would be enticed to buy its CPUs. This practice hurt other chip makers like AMD, which were not as big back then as they are today.

• The case was first filed in the Luxembourg-based General Court (Europe's second-highest court) where it was dismissed in 2014.
• But the EU Commission did not give up. It appealed against the verdict in the Court of Justice (the highest court in Europe) which again referred it back to the General Court in 2017.
• Once again, in 2022, the General Court dismissed the charges against Intel, citing a lack of evidence and legal grounds for the anti-competitive accusation.

And now, this decision has been upheld by the CJEU as well. This verdict is final and it cannot be appealed against.

It is for the General Court to examine any argument that is intended to call into question the Commission's assessments and that is capable of invalidating the conclusions reached by the Commission' - CJEU

The EU Commission is probably not happy with this verdict. However, there's one thing that went in their favor. In their lawsuit, they had also accused Intel of paying PC makers to delay the launch of products built on AMD chips between 2002 to 2006.

This act has been recognized as unlawful" by the General Court and hence, Intel will have to pay a penalty for that. However, the court refrained from commenting on the exact amount of penalty that needs to be paid.

Another Lawsuit & Another Fine

Although this is a huge win for Intel, the fight isn't over yet. It has a separate 376.4 million-euro ($406.6 million) fine imposed on it by Brussels for imposing some sales restrictions which even the court found unlawful" in 2022.

Back then, since Intel had a bigger fish to fry, it didn't try to get this fine overturned. But who knows, maybe now it'll appeal against this fine as well.

China's Cybersecurity Association of China recently accused Intel of jeopardizing national security by compromising its quality of products, security infrastructure, and the number of vulnerabilities in its chips. However, Intel has denied these allegations and assured to cooperate with the authorities.

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