Brussels, 11/06/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 12 June, the European General Court is expected to decide whether the record €1.06 billion fine levied by the European Commission on Intel in 2009 for abuse of its dominant position on the microprocessor market should be cancelled (see EUROPE 9901).
This is important because it is the first fine of such a scale levied by the European Commission, beating the €497 million fine on Microsoft in 2004, although it is only 4.15% of Intel's turnover for 2009.
In its decision, the Commission said the US manufacturer had abused its dominant position (over 70% of the market) from 2002 to 2007 on the global X86 processor market (used for Windows and Linux), with the aim of undermining its main (and virtually only) rival on this market, AMD-Advanced Micro Devices. The Commission says that Intel introduced measures to keep its own clients sweet and keep them away from competitors. Intel granted reductions to four big computer manufacturers, Dell, Lenovo, HP and NEC as long as they bought all or virtually all of their X86 processors from Intel. It paid HP, Acer and Lenovo to cancel or postpone the launch of products using AMD processors and/or introduced restrictions on the sale of said products. Microelectronc device distributor Media-Saturn-Holding was paid by Intel to only sell computers equipped with X86 from Intel.
Intel is challenging the decision and demanding its full or partial cancellation. It argues that the European Commission committed an error in its ruling that the conditional reductions granted to Intel's clients were abusive on the grounds that they were conditional, rather than providing that they ruled out competition; the “as effective competitor” (AEC) test used by the Commission in this connection led to many errors in its analysis of evidence; the Commission did not demonstrate that the company had had a long-term strategy to get rid of rivals; the Commission did not respect the rights of the defence because it did not consider references to new evidence and did not provide internal documents that potentially exonerated Intel; and the fine was wrongly calculated.
The European General Court will give its ruling on all the above claims. (FG)