BRUSSELS: The European Commission slapped a new fine of 376 million euros ($400 million) on US chipmaker Intel on Friday after an EU court annulled a previous record penalty for abusing its dominance in the computer chip market.
The case is one of many protracted legal battles against tech behemoths the European Union has faced, fights which have driven Brussels to introduce tough new curbs on how digital giants do business in Europe.
The European Union’s antitrust enforcer said Intel had engaged in “anti-competitive practices aimed at excluding competitors from the relevant market”.
The commission said it was restoring the fine partially “for a previously established abuse of dominant position in the market for computer chips called x86 central processing units”.
An EU court in Luxembourg last year annulled the fine of 1.06 billion euros handed down in 2009, after it found that Brussels failed to adequately prove anti-competitive practices.
The EU’s initial case was based on alleged market abuse between 2002 and 2007, but its origins go as far back as 2000 when complaints against Intel were first lodged at the commission.
The commission slapped the fine on Intel after saying the company had offered clients price rebates to use its own computer chips in preference to rival AMD.
Intel at the time dominated the market for the x86 CPUs with a 70-percent share during the more than five years it was accused of breaking EU antitrust rules.
AFP/APP/Newspakistan.tv
