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.

Court Reaffirms Illegality of Intel’s Conduct

In 2022, judges concluded the commission wrongly assumed the rebates were inherently harmful without analyzing each one. Still, the court confirmed the unlawfulness of Intel’s “naked” payments—direct inducements made to manufacturers such as Acer and Lenovo specifically to limit or exclude AMD-based computers. The difficulty was quantifying damages, leading to annulment of the first fine.

On Wednesday, the General Court said the commission did not need to re-prove its jurisdiction or redefine the infringement, as the illegal restrictions had already been upheld by EU courts. The only requirement was to recalculate the fine based solely on the conduct still at issue.

Intel’s Appeal Rejected—But Fine Further Adjusted

The court dismissed Intel’s arguments that its defense rights were violated, that the 2023 decision lacked adequate reasoning, or that a fresh statement of objections was required. The judgment noted that the procedural backdrop was “perfectly well-known” to Intel and that the commission clearly laid out how it computed the penalty.

Intel had argued the reduced fine remained “disproportionate and unlawful,” citing the previous annulment and the narrower set of practices under scrutiny. Judges, however, found the commission’s assessment must be modified only to further refine the fine by considering the limited number of computers affected and a 12-month gap between some anticompetitive acts.

Counsel

Intel is represented by Daniel Beard KC and Jack Williams of Monckton Chambers, instructed by Bernd Meyring of Linklaters LLP.
Counsel for the commission was not immediately available.