Intel will have to pay €376 million for antitrust practices the chipmaker proceeded with until 2006. This was decided by the European Court of Justice earlier today.
The Court of Justice of the European Union fined Intel 376.36 million euros. The case looked into antitrust practices that took place between November 2002 and December 2006. During that period, the chip maker paid HP, Acer and Lenovo not to offer products with competing chips or not to market them until later on.
Lower fine
The case was settled for the first time in 2009. Today follows a conclusion by another authority. The chipmaker does escape the original fine of 1.06 billion euros. Although the final verdict remains that Intel was guilty of antitrust practices.
It is not certain that this is the final end to the lawsuit. Intel does not yet give a definitive answer to that in its response to the ruling: “We are analyzing the decision and the amount of the fine to determine the possible grounds and chances of success of an appeal to the European courts.”
Intel’s practices are no exception
Incidentally, Intel is not the only party paying competitors to ensure a strong market position. Google is guilty of the same to ensure its own search engine into the products of many manufacturers by default. In the United States, a lawsuit against Google Search regarding these facts is pending.
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