Court to re-examine Intel’s appeal against EU's $1.26B antitrust fine

In a huge relief for the US chipmaker, Intel, EU’s top court has ruled that Intel’s appeal against European Union's $1.26 billion antitrust fine will be re-examined by a lower tribunal.

The fine was initially given to Intel by the European Commission’s competition department for abusing its dominant position in the x86 microprocessor market between 2002 and 2009. Criticising judges for not analyzing the economic aspects of the case properly, the court said that the lower tribunal will look into all of Intel’s arguments regarding a test to check whether the rebates used by the company was capable of harming competition.

The latest ruling puts aside the 2014 ruling of the General Court which upheld the 2009 fine on the basis that the court had made a legal error. Intel's eight-year-old fight with EU will have wider ramifications for many others tech companies including Google and Qualcomm.

While Google is being investigated for goading phone makers to use its Android software, Qualcomm is being probed whether the company unfairly paid Apple to only use Qualcomm chipsets in its products.