A top European court ruled Wednesday that competition regulators were right to brand Intel Corp. an abusive dominant force—yet sliced the company’s penalty by €140 million, delivering a partial victory in the long-running antitrust saga.
General Court Upholds Decision, Shrinks the Sanction
The General Court of the European Union reduced the European Commission’s reissued €376.4 million fine—first reinstated in 2023 after Intel’s original €1.06 billion penalty was thrown out. Despite the cut, judges said the commission’s decision was upheld “in essence,” keeping the abuse finding firmly in place.
This case has ricocheted across Europe’s courts for more than a decade. In 2022, the General Court annulled Intel’s massive fine after rejecting allegations that the company used loyalty rebates to push manufacturers toward buying most of their x86 CPU chips exclusively from Intel. The European Court of Justice later confirmed that annulment in 2024.
Rebates, “Naked” Restrictions, and a Rivalry at the Chip Level
At the heart of the dispute are chips sold between 2002 and 2006 to major manufacturers including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Lenovo. Regulators say Intel used conditional rebates to pressure manufacturers into sourcing most of their processors from Intel while paying firms to delay, limit, or drop computers using rival AMD chips.
The 2009 penalty—then the largest the commission had imposed for abuse of dominance—was eventually overshadowed by later fines against Google. Intel initially lost its challenge, but the ECJ in 2017 faulted regulators for failing to properly assess the actual competitive impact of the rebates and sent the matter back.
