EU court upholds commission’s Intel decision
An EU court has upheld a European Commission decision to fine chip maker Intel for anti-competitive behaviour, but has reduced the financial penalty by €140 million.
Intel had challenged a 2023 decision by the commission to fine the firm more than €376 million for restrictions imposed on HP, Acer, and Lenovo concerning the use of processors from rival AMD.
The commission’s 2023 action followed the partial annulment by the EU courts of a 2009 decision against Intel, which involved a fine of more than €1 billion.
The EU’s General Court found today (10 December), however, that the commission remained competent to impose penalties for the so-called ‘naked’ restrictions imposed on certain computer manufacturers that had not been annulled by the courts.
‘Enforce previous judgments’
The court found that the existence of these restrictions had already been upheld by the EU courts and that the commission did not need to show again that it had jurisdiction or redefine a new infringement.
“It was required only to enforce the previous judgments by recalculating the fine on the basis solely of the conduct still at issue,” the judges stated.
While not calling into question the lawfulness of the 2023 decision, the court ruled that the amount of the fine ought to be “refined”, by taking greater account of the relatively limited number of computers affected by the restrictions and the timing of the anti-competitive practices.
As a result, it reduced the amount of the fine to just over €237 million.