Antitrust: Commission welcomes General Court judgment upholding its decision against Intel

The European Commission welcomes today's judgment by the General Court (case T-286/09) which fully upholds the Commission's 2009 Decision which found that Intel had abused its dominant position and which imposed on Intel a fine of €1.06 billion (see IP/09/745). The judgment is significant because it confirms that the Commission was fully justified in pursuing the anticompetitive conduct in question in a major worldwide market. The Commission will continue to vigorously pursue abuses of dominant market positions, which restrict competition in the Single Market to the detriment of consumers.

On 13 May 2009, the Commission adopted a decision prohibiting Intel's anticompetitive conduct under Article 7 of the EU's Antitrust Regulation (Regulation 1/2003). The decision concluded that Intel had, in breach of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (ex Article 82 of the EC Treaty), engaged in two types of abuse of its dominant position in the x86 CPU market – i.e. essentially, the market for computer chips. These were:

(1) granting rebates to 4 PC and server manufacturers (Dell, HP, NEC, Lenovo) conditional on them obtaining all or almost all of their supplies from Intel, and payments to one downstream computer retailer (Media Markt) conditional on it only selling PCs with Intel CPUs ("conditional rebates"); and

(2) granting direct payments to 3 computer manufacturers (HP, Acer and Lenovo) to halt, delay or limit the launch of specific products incorporating chips from Intel’s only rival, AMD (so-called “naked restrictions”).

read full article at Europen Commission