Intel emerges victorious in EU antitrust case after top court upholds quashing of €1.06B fine

The EU’s Court of Justice upheld the General Court’s decision to quash a €1.06B ($1.2B) fine imposed on Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) in an antitrust case.

The Court of Justice of the European Union, or CJEU, consists of two courts — the Court of Justice and the General Court.

In May 2009, the European Commission, or EC, imposed the fine on Intel alleging that the company abused its dominant position on the market for x86 microprocessors by granting loyalty rebates to its customers and to a desktop computer distributor. In 2014, the General Court dismissed in its entirety Intel’s action against the EC’s decision.

However, following Intel’s appeal, the Court of Justice set aside that judgment and referred the case back to the General Court, which then annulled the Commission’s decision in part and cancelled the €1.06B fine completely.

The EC appealed against the General Court’s 2022 judgment, and now the Court of Justice has rejected all the grounds of appeal raised by the Commission.

“The Court of Justice dismisses the Commission’s appeal, thereby upholding the judgment of the General Court,” said the Court of Justice in a press release on Thursday.

Earlier this year, Intel’s fight against the fine was helped by an opinion of an adviser to the EU’s top court, noting that regulators had erred in their analysis.

The EC had fined Intel for giving rebates to computer manufacturers Dell (DELL), Hewlett-Packard (HPE), NEC and Lenovo (OTCPK:LNVGY) (OTCPK:LNVGF) for buying most of their chips from Intel, which regulators said was an attempt to block Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), as per report from Reuters.