BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The EU Court docket of Justice, Europe’s prime court docket, dominated on Thursday in favour of Intel, ending a virtually two-decade-long struggle between the U.S. chipmaker and EU regulators who had mentioned it had tried to thwart a rival.
“The Court docket of Justice dismisses the Fee’s attraction, thereby upholding the judgment of the Normal Court docket,” the court docket mentioned.
The European Fee had fined Intel for giving rebates to laptop makers Dell, Hewlett-Packard Co, NEC and Lenovo for getting most of their chips from Intel, which regulators mentioned was an try to dam Superior Micro Gadgets.
Regulators usually oppose rebates provided by dominant firms as a result of they worry they could be anticompetitive, whereas firms say enforcers should show reductions have anticompetitive results earlier than firms are sanctioned.
EU regulators had initially fined Intel 1.06 billion euros ($1.14 billion) however a decrease tribunal scrapped that.
Intel’s case was boosted earlier this yr when an adviser to the court docket mentioned regulators had not correctly carried out an financial evaluation.
($1 = 0.9285 euros)
(Reporting by Makini Brice; modifying by Charlotte Van Campenhout and Jason Neely)