Intel was not convicted of antitrust practices by the European Court of Justice. Mistakes in gathering the evidence allowed the company to avoid a fine of up to 1.06 billion euros.
A definitive end has come to the antitrust case between Intel and the European Commission dating back to 2009. The case dealt with payments Intel made to various laptop manufacturers to get its own chips into the products. Dell, HP, and Lenovo, among others, allegedly received these payments. The money came on the condition that the range of devices with competing chips would be limited or not appear on the market until later.
“The Court of Justice dismisses the Commission’s appeal and thus confirms the judgment of the General Court,” the court recently pronounced. The case was brought to Europe’s highest court after all other options had already been used.
Errors in test
Intel was not fined because of a faulty test procedure. The Commission allegedly misapplied the AEC test, which is used to assess how damaging certain practices are to competitiveness in a market. The Commission uses this test more often as a yardstick, making it very likely that it has been misapplied before. It remains to be seen what impact this ruling will have on pending antitrust cases.
Also read: No, Qualcomm will not acquire Intel