Intel won the European Union antitrust regulator's $ 1.2 billion lawsuits against it, more than a decade ago, Intel was accused of using commercial power to crowd out Competitor AMD. In 2009, the European Union's antitrust agency said Intel was trying to crush its rival AMD by offering rebates to computer makers Dell, HP, NEC, and Lenovo to encourage them to buy chips from Intel.
On Wednesday, the European Union's General Court in Luxembourg rejected most of the regulator's 2009 ruling. The court said the analysis carried out by EU antitrust regulators was incomplete and failed to establish the necessary legal criteria to judge the competitive impact of kickbacks. Notably, the court said it could not determine damages related to Intel's actions, so the part related to the fine was dropped entirely.
A central question for the court is whether the EU antitrust regulator has completed a sufficient economic analysis to show that Intel's alleged conduct harmed competition. While EU antitrust regulators conducted an economic analysis of the case before imposing the fine, the general court did not assess the work when it dismissed Intel's initial appeal in 2014.
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