Intel gets historic victory as court overturns $1.2 billion EU antitrust fine

• The court states that the European Commission's analysis is incomplete

• The EU hit Intel with the commission’s highest antitrust penalty at the time in 2009

Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) has won its legal battle in the European Union courts over an antitrust penalty of 1.06 billion euros ($1.2 billion) for attempting to push out a rival.

On Wednesday, the EU's General Court in Luxembourg overturned part of the regulator's 2009 finding that Intel had exploited its dominant position by offering loyalty rebates and bonuses that prevented competitor chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. from competing.

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" The (European) 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," the General Court said in a statement. 

The General Court affirmed the commission's 2009 decision in 2014. However, in 2017, the EU Court of Justice, Europe's topmost court, ordered a re-examination of Intel's case.

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In 2009, the European Commission slapped Intel with the EU's largest antitrust penalties at the time. It accounted for around 4% of Intel's $37.6 billion in revenue in 2008, as per the news reports. 

The commission said that between 2002 and 2007, Intel exploited its dominating position in the global market for data center processors by pursuing a strategy designed to keep competitors out of the market.

Since then, Intel has been embroiled in a never-ending legal battle with the EU's antitrust authority.

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The decision comes on the same day that Intel is scheduled to release its fourth-quarter earnings.

According to an average of experts polled by FactSet, the semiconductor company's sales would be $19.2 billion, a 4% decrease from the previous year, reflecting the sale of its memory business. Net income is forecast to be $3.2 billion, down more than 45 percent from the previous year, as Intel ramps up investments in new operations and products, WSJ reported. 

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Picture Credits: BBC