The EU General Court annuls in part the Commission’s decision imposing a fine of €1.06B on the world’s largest semiconductor chip manufacturer (Intel)

The General Court annuls in part the Commission decision imposing a fine of € 1.06 billion on Intel* The Commission’s analysis is incomplete and does not make it possible to establish to the requisite legal standard that the rebates at issue were capable of having, or likely to have, anticompetitive effects. By decision of 13 May 2009, [1] the European Commission imposed on the microprocessor manufacturer Intel a fine of € 1.06 billion for having abused its dominant position on the worldwide market for x86 [2] processors [3] between October 2002 and December 2007, by implementing a strategy intended to exclude competitors from the market. According to the Commission, that abuse was characterised by two types of commercial conduct engaged in by Intel vis-a-vis its trading partners,