Europe's highest court strikes down antitrust case against Intel for good
Intel is going through a rough time right now, and things will likely get worse before they get better.
The European Court of Justice, which is the European Union's version of the US Supreme Court, has upheld a previous decision to cancel a billion-dollar fine against Intel. The company didn't infringe EU antitrust laws with conditional rebates for CPU resellers; at least, there is no definitive proof it did.
Intel is going through a rough time right now, and things will likely get worse before they get better. The US chipmaker needed some good news, and the European judiciary system obliged with a recent ruling in the chipmaker's favor. A new judgment by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) cleared Intel of any wrongdoing in a decade-long case, upholding a decision from a lower court by rejecting the EU Commission's attempt to fine it for violating antitrust laws.
The ECJ judgment officially supports the annulment by the General Court of the EU Commission's decision to punish Intel with a $1.1 billion fine for abuse of dominant position. The Commission – Europe's primary executive institution – fined Intel in 2009, stating that the company paid prominent PC manufacturers Dell, HP, NEC, and Lenovo to choose its CPUs over processors from AMD and other competitors.
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