Skip to main content

Intel continues to fight European Commission’s $1.2B fine from 2009

eu fines google commission header
Image used with permission by copyright holder
In recent years, the European Commission has been coming down hard on U.S. tech giants with antitrust fines, but Intel is continuing its fight over a 2009 ruling made against it.

In the original ruling, the commission, which is the executive arm of the EU, ruled that Intel had abused its position as a dominant chipmaker by offering rebates to PC makers and retailers from 2002 to 2005 that would lower retail prices.

Ultimately, Intel was fined a record 1.06 billion euros ($1.2 billion U.S.) for allegedly pushing out its competitors, namely AMD, with these tactics.

Now, the company is continuing its long-running opposition to the fine with a new appeal that challenges the legitimacy of the commission’s ruling. The first appeal from two years ago was rejected.

Intel counsel Daniel Beard claimed this week in the European Union’s Court of Justice that the ruling did not consider “all relevant circumstances” of Intel’s rebate program. As a result, he said, it did not thoroughly investigate whether Intel rivals were truly put at an unfair disadvantage.

At the heart of the commission’s antitrust case against Intel is whether a company as big as Intel, with a considerably large market share than competitors, can hold certain commercial partnerships with the likes of Dell, Lenovo, and PC retailers.

These kinds of strategies can lead to “the marginalization or even the elimination of its only competitor,” said Nicholas Khan, a lawyer for the European Commission.

“By undermining its competitors’ ability to compete on the merits of their products, Intel’s actions undermined competition and innovation,” stated the ruling handed down in 2009.

Intel is one of many technology corporations butting heads with the European Commission over antitrust proceedings. The body has also been investigating Google for allegedly abusing its position in the search market and Qualcomm for allegedly paying original equipment manufacturers to include its chips in smartphones and tablets.

Intel’s fine in 2009 was staggering at the time but it’s since been topped by the commission’s $3 billion fine of Google last month.

Editors' Recommendations

Jonathan Keane
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Jonathan is a freelance technology journalist living in Dublin, Ireland. He's previously written for publications and sites…
As an enthusiast, these are the apps every PC needs to have
A gaming PC with RGB synced lights running Apex Legends.

I've written about PC hardware for several years, and I proudly wear the badge of "enthusiast." But for as fun and interesting as the hardware is, no high-end PC is complete without the proper software.

Over my years of building PCs and tweaking hardware, I've cultivated a list of software that I need to install on every device I use. Here's what I install on every PC I build or test.
Afterburner
MSI

Read more
Nvidia’s RTX 5090 might completely run AMD into the ground
RTX 4090.

Nvidia's best graphics card might reach new heights in the next generation of GPUs -- or at least that's what a reputable leaker implies. The RTX 4090 already delivered a massive generational uplift, and we're looking at something similar, or even better, with the future RTX 5090. It all comes down to a ridiculously large memory bus and a huge increase in CUDA cores. But does Nvidia really need all that juice to compete with AMD?

Today's round of tantalizing leaks comes from a well-known source in the GPU space, kopite7kimi, who released some speculation about the possible architecture of the GB202 chip, which would be the Blackwell counterpart to the AD102. There's a bit of math involved.

Read more
Best OLED monitor deals: Get an OLED screen from just $370
Marvel's Spider-Man running on the Samsung Odyssey OLED G8.

If you want the best screens that you can get from monitor deals, it's highly recommended that you go for displays featuring OLED technology. OLED stands for organic light-emitting diode, and because they eliminate the need for a backlight by generating 100% of the light on the screen, OLED monitors can offer perfect black levels, extremely wide viewing angles, and insanely fast response times, among other benefits. If you're interested in OLED monitor deals, here are the top offers that are available right now, but you'll need to hurry because they may disappear at any moment.
ViewSonic 15.6-inch ColorPro VP16 OLED monitor -- $370, was $400

The ViewSonic ColorPro VP16 OLED monitor is a portable display that features a 15.6-inch screen with Full HD resolution. It comes with a flexible and foldable ergonomic stand for easy height and viewing angle adjustments, and there's also a tripod mount integrated into the stand so that the ViewSonic ColorPro VP16 can be used as photo or video preview screen. For connectivity options, you get two USB-C ports and a mini HDMI port.

Read more