EU fines chip giant Intel $400 million in old case

• Intel had been fined over a billion euros back in 2009 by the EU.
• The initial fine was thrown out in 2022 by the Luxembourg-based General Court.
• The 2009 ruling accused Intel of abusing its dominant position in the market.

The EU has re-fined Intel 376 million euro ($400 million) for antitrust violations dating back decades. The fine stems from an antitrust case lodged against the company for anti-competitive behaviour nearly two decades ago.

The company had in 2009 been fined 1.06 billion for the offence and other practices. The ruling  had accused Intel of blocking rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

On Friday (Sept. 22), the European Commission re-imposed a fine with the period range being between November 2002 and December 2006.

Some of the anti-competitive measures Intel allegedly took:

• Between November 2002 and May 2005, Intel made payments to HP conditional upon HP selling business desktops based on the x86 CPUs of its competitor AMD (i) only to small- and medium-sized enterprises; (ii) only via direct distribution channels (rather than distributors); and (iii) on HP postponing the launch of its first AMD-based business desktop in Europe by 6 months
• Intel made payments to Acer conditional upon Acer postponing the launch of an AMD-based notebook from September 2003 to January 2004
• Intel made payments to Lenovo conditional upon Lenovo postponing the launch of AMD-based notebooks from June 2006 to the end of 2006.