Intel’s 15-year EU antitrust case gets another plot twist

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In the never-ending telenovela that is Intel vs. the European Commission, a fresh episode just dropped, and there’s another big fine involved. 

According to Reuters, Intel has officially lost its latest attempt to wriggle out of a long-running antitrust case that dates back to 2009, when netbooks roamed the earth, and everyone thought mobile computing meant carrying a slightly smaller laptop.

The European Commission had originally slapped Intel with a massive €1.06 billion fine for two types of anticompetitive shenanigans: secretly giving computer makers rebates to freeze out rivals and paying companies to delay or ditch AMD-powered machines altogether. 

Those second payments, delightfully labeled “naked restrictions,” because nothing says corporate misconduct like a phrase that makes journalists double-take, are the part still haunting Intel today.

Intel managed to get the “hidden rebates” portion tossed in 2022 after courts decided the economics behind the ruling didn’t hold up. 

That wiped nearly a billion euros off the company’s tab. But the naked restrictions? Those stuck. In 2023, the EU re-imposed a €376 million fine for those payments Intel allegedly made to HP, Acer, and Lenovo between 2002 and 2006. 

Intel fought back, again, and won a partial victory. The fine has now been trimmed to €237 million, a bargain by antitrust standards, but still not exactly pocket change.

This case has ping-ponged through Europe’s judicial system for so long that processors mentioned in early filings are now considered “retro.” 

Yet the saga may not be over: both Intel and the Commission still have the option to appeal to the EU Court of Justice. Because what this story clearly needs is a sequel.

So here we are, 15 years later, still arguing about rebates offered during the Bush administration and laptops most people barely remember. 

If the tech world ever needed a reminder that the wheels of justice turn slowly, sometimes slower than Moore’s Law, Intel is living proof.