Intel's $1.3 Billion Fine In Europe Requires Review, Court Says (nytimes.com)

cdreimer writes: According to a report in The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), the Court of Justice in the European Union has ordered the lower courts to revisit the $1.3 billion anti-trust fine levied against Intel in 2009, giving hope to Google and other American technology firms to avoid being fined for being dominant in the EU markets. From the report: "The highest court in the European Union ordered on Wednesday that a $1.3 billion antitrust fine doled out against Intel nearly a decade ago be revisited, a ruling that could give hope to Google and other American technology giants facing challenges to their dominance in the region. The decision to send the case back to a lower court for re-examination is a blow to regional competition regulators, whose oversight of digital services has been among the world's most aggressive. It could also embolden American technology companies, which have long complained that antitrust officials in Europe target them unfairly, to challenge rulings and investigations against them. The move by the Court of Justice of the European Union raises the prospect that the 1.06 billion euro fine on Intel in 2009, equivalent to $1.26 billion at current exchange rates, could be reduced or scrapped entirely. The penalty -- at the time the largest of its kind -- was upheld by European courts in 2014 and will most likely be the subject of legal battles for years to come. That record fine was overtaken by a 2.4 billion euro penalty against Google in June. The Silicon Valley giant was accused of using its dominant position in online search to give preferential treatment to its internet shopping service over those of its rivals."

Comments

Fines

[JBMcB]

Will the fine have any impact on the market shares of any of the CPU manufacturers? Nope. Whom gets the money from the fine? AMD? Nope. ARM? Nope. Any other CPU maker - Qualcomm, Broadcomm, Atmel, Toshiba, Texas Instruments, IBM, Freescale? Nope. Any company who has been directly affected by their anti-competitive practices? Nope.

The EU gets all the money. Well that fixes everything, then. Good job, EU.

Re:Fines

[Xest]

And what do you think the EU does with the money? EU politicians don't even get remotely the income of US politicians so it's not like they're just making themselves rich off of grants like this.

EU funding goes to various projects, many are science and technology projects, and ARM has in fact successfully bid for EU research funding in the past.

So yes, good job EU. You fined a predatory company willing to abuse it's illegally obtained market position sufficiently well enough to have a deterrent effect whilst also obtaining funds from the damage caused that could go on to help stimulate further competition in the market.

This can't even be billed as an anti-US action as the summary suggests because the complaint was by and ruled in favour of another US company - AMD. This was a good example of the EU ruling impartially that market laws apply on EU territory, and that companies cannot get away with the monopoly abuse and illegal trading practices they have been allowed to get away with in the US. This complaint was about two US companies operating on EU soil, one of whom was deemed to be operating illegaly, resulting in a favourable ruling for the other US company operating in the EU.

Hopefully this is not just upheld, but the fine increased to send a message to Intel that it should be grateful it got to keep it's monopoly position for a mere $1bn the first time around - still a relatively small price to pay for illegally obtained dominance in the grand scheme of things.

Meta comment

[easyTree]

I notice a trend of the summary stating ' the source may be pay-walled, here's an alternate source'. Why not simply skip the pay-walled source?