A €1.06 billion EU antitrust sanction against chipmaker Intel for abuse of dominance dating back to 2009 (when it was worth $1.45 billion) has been placed on the books of history after the bloc’s highest court rejected the commission’s appeal against a 2022 lower court ruling that overturned the sanction.
“The Court of Justice rejects the Commission’s appeal, thus confirming the judgment of the General Court,” the CJEU wrote in a press release on Thursday.
The part of the EU enforcement measures that failed concerned the “conditional rebates” that Intel gave to computer makers for the use of its chips. The Commission had argued that these discounts were anti-competitive, but the judges ultimately disagreed.
However, Intel didn’t have everything won: the 2022 decision confirmed the illegal nature of its “pure restraints” – practices of paying PC makers to stop or delay the production of products containing competing chips . The chipmaker did not appeal the decision, so the EU imposed a new fine of around $400 million last fall.