Author: Yun Chee

Luxembourg (Reuters) - U.S. chip maker Intel was fined on Friday with EU antitrust regulators for €376 million ($421.4 million in $421.4 million) about two years ago for excluding competitors from the market, deemed it disproportionate and disproportionate.

The case was dated in 2009, when the European Commission cracked down on an €1.06 billion fine at Intel to block competitors' advanced micro devices.

The tech giant managed to convince Europe's second-highest general court to remove the fine in 2022.

However, the judge agreed that part of the commission's 2009 decision prompted the EU competition watchdog to re-fined €376 million for payments Intel paid to HP, Acer and Lenovo to stop or delay competitors between November 2002 and December 2006.

This practice is called naked restriction and is frown by antitrust regulators. Intel then brought its case back to the General Court, demanding that the new EU ruling and fines be revoked.

Intel's lawyers say EU contest executors have not yet considered the limited scope of illegal activities related to HP, Acer and Lenovo.

Daniel Beard told three judges that the committee could not uphold a ruling to remove competitors from the overall strategy of the X86 chip market. This is a narrow tactical move. ”

"Naked restrictions cannot be seen as equal to each pricing practice that is overturned. They also have the same cumulative effect or strategic nature. They themselves do not maintain a strategic discovery of the overall, market-wide market scope," he said.

The beard said the commission imposed "totally disproportionate and unfair".

EU Watchdog rejects Intel's argument.

"The committee correctly applied the discovery guide and, in doubt, the committee chose Intel's support," said its attorney Pedro Caro de Sousa.

"The fine is obviously disproportionate to the seriousness of Intel's actions, which in the last year of the tort, had a turnover of 1% and today's turnover of about 0.5% of its turnover," he said.

Intel and the committee both called for a resolution by setting the scale of the fine. A ruling is expected in the coming months.

The case is 09:30 T-1129/23 Intel Corporation v. Committee.

($1 = 0.8922 euros)

(In paragraph 7, the story has been corrected, changing the number of judges to three instead of five)

(Reported by Foo Yun Chee; Edited by Jan Harvey)