EU appeals overturned $1.2b Intel antitrust fine

The European Commission (EC) is going ahead with an appeal against a court decision earlier this year to drop a $1.2 billion fine imposed against Intel for anti-competitive behavior. The case stretches back many years and concerns deals between Intel and some system vendors to favor Intel chips over those from rivals such as …

[VoiceOfTruth]

Law and the legal system

A system devised by cunning foxes to drag out as long as possible to ensure the fees for their 'professional advice' keep getting paid. Whoever has the deeper pocket wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Law and the legal system

Laws are to protect the rich (mostly from the poor or poorer).

[innominatus]

Re: Law and the legal system

Or nobody wins in the way of Jarndyce and Jarndyce or in the real world the original sub-postmasters compensation swallowed up in legal fees

[Rol]

So a rebate that is only paid on condition that the consumer cannot buy an AMD computer from your store is in no way an illegal anticompetitive act, until they find 1 of the 20 million customers who is willing to say, "Yes I would have loved to have bought a cheaper, better AMD machine, but they did not have them in stock"

This is just madness.

Why isn't there an anti-justice act that puts the kibosh on such antics.

I'd love the same to be applied in the UK's supermarkets, who have similar deals going with the big brands, denying choice and ultimate competition. The end game being, the price increases massively as the brand has shut out the competition for good.

[Anonymous Coward]

With that amount of money at stake, and over this timescale, would Intel have been finding subtle ways to, ehh, make the court more Intel-friendly as justices retired/died?

[JassMan]

With the amount of money they spent bribing manufacturers and retailers along with the amount it has so far cost in lawyers, they probably could have dropped the price to a point where it compensated for the poorer performance and sold their chips on a level playing field.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortuately, if a nation or group of nations does impose a penalty on a multinational that they can't ignore, it just gets dragged out in court for decades, and the multi-national continues on with business as usual, except for being more careful about getting caught.

[ShadowSystems]

Did we say Billion?

You've dragged this on for so long it's like you're the SCO of CPU's. We're changing that B to a T & taking it out of your hide. Bend over, this is gonna sting...

[dajames]

Re: Did we say Billion?

You've dragged this on for so long it's like you're the SCO of CPU's. We're changing that B to a T & taking it out of your hide.

This is an EU ruling, and in European languages the word "billion" is usually understood to mean 10¹² rather than 10⁹ anyway.

That means that a "trillion" would be understood to mean 10¹⁸, and I don't think Intel have that much ...

[luis river]

Europeans bad and late

The capitostes EU they are very... clever, (cynicism). A possible fine again Intel shall be for reward injured AMD, dont put up in european pockets

[Binraider]

The recently reported on case of AMD giving exclusivity to certain system builders; thus putting monopoly pricing on Threadripper 5000 is yet another example of standard practise amongst uncompetitive supply chains.

If there were a dozen x86-64 vendors no-single operator could gouge the market. Intel are guilty, AMD are guilty, and the whole damn world of monopolies are guilty. So where does the liability end? WIth the voters that put lawmakers in place?

Actually, there is something to be said about the latter being true.