European Commission to appeal for billions of fine Intel for disadvantages AMD – IT Pro – News

The European Commission is appealing the ruling of the European Court of Justice, which earlier this year annulled the billion-dollar fine for Intel. The EC imposed this fine in 2009 because Intel allegedly abused its power in the x86 CPU market.

The European Commission fined Intel for using an unfair advantage over competitor AMD. Intel would offer computer manufacturers such as Dell, Lenovo, HP and NEC discounts on its processors if they used few or no AMD processors in their systems. Intel would also have paid MediaMarktSaturn in exchange for a sales freeze on systems with AMD processors.

The Commission found that this hindered competition, thereby limiting consumer choice and inhibiting innovation in the market. The height was fixed at 1.06 billion euros, which is today almost EUR 1.3 billion, adjusted for inflation. That was a record amount at the time. The sum corresponded to 4.5 percent of the company’s worldwide turnover in 2008. Intel’s net profit in that year totaled 3.9 billion euros.

Intel has resisted it since the fine was imposed. In 2014, an appeal was lodged by the European Court of Justice turned downbut Intel went in 2016 appeal again† The result of this was a judgment from January of this year: part of the decision from 2009 is void and Intel does not have to pay the fine. The court found that the European Commission’s analysis was incomplete and that it did not sufficiently show that Intel’s rebates were restricting competition in an illegal way.

The European Commission confirmed last Friday opposite The Register that it will appeal the ruling. The EC will not comment further and Intel was not immediately available to respond to The Register.

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