Intel wins half of a $1 billion antitrust case that dates back to the Pentium 4,

Intel, the chip giant under pressure, has some good news. The EU Court of Justice upheld Intel's partial success in its appeal against an antitrust case that dates back to the early 2000s. Intel owes only $350 million to the EU, instead of more than $1 billion. Huzzah!

In 2022, in response to a challenge by Intel, the EU General Court decided that a part of a 2009 decision against Intel was invalid. The European Commission then appealed the partially successful appeal by Intel of the 2009 decision. The highest court of the EU has now upheld the decision from 2022.

This means that the part of the decision is final and cannot be appealed (okay, it's not a real word). What part of the decision is that? The short version is this:

In 2009, the European Commission discovered that Intel was guilty of two shady practices from the very beginning of the 2000s. Around the same time, Intel was chasing gigahertz in the Pentium4 Netburst chip while AMD was beating Intel on pure performance early on with CPUs such as the Athlon Thunderbird or Athlon 64.

First, the EU discovered that Intel paid PC builders partially or completely hidden rebates on the condition that they source all or nearly all their CPUs from Intel. Second, Intel paid PC manufacturers to delay or cancel the release of certain PC models based upon CPUs made AMD.

The 2022 decision, which has now been definitively upheld, relates to the first malpractice - the hidden rebates. Intel is still guilty, in the current situation, of paying PC builders so they would stop using AMD-based PCs. That's why Intel is still liable for a portion of the original $1 billion plus fine.

Intel has not yet decided whether it will appeal the remaining $350 million or the accusations that come with it. The EU has issued a statement that seems to indicate it believes the remaining fines will be enforced.

"The Commission appealed a part of the 2022 General Court judgment concerning Intel's conditional discounts. The judgment of today only concerns those. Intel has not appealed the part of the 2022 General Court judgement concerning the naked restrictions. Therefore, the judgment has become final."

The Register reports that Intel is appealing the remaining fine. Why not appeal the case again, given that it has been running for 15 years and that lawyers' fees have accumulated in an amount we don't know. Watch this space, or in other words.