14 DAY TRIAL // Back in November 2008, Santa Clara, California-based Intel filed an appeal with the European Union's Court of First Instance, claiming that Directorate General for Competition had denied the company access to certain AMD documents that, if made available, would ultimately exonerate Intel. It now appears that the aforementioned court reached a decision, according to which Intel would be refused any arguments, annulment requests and pleas for financial relief in the EU Commission's ongoing case against the chip maker.
The investigation against Intel started back in 2000, when the company's competitor, Advanced Micro Devices, filed a complaint with the EU Commission claiming that Intel had abused its market position in the detriment of AMD. Intel was charged with several allegations, including that of providing rebates to a retailer that was supposed to only sell Intel-based PCs, paying an original equipment manufacturer to delay the launch of a line of AMD-based products and offering rebates to OEMs, under the condition that they used only Intel chips in their laptops.
“The Commission is pleased that the CFI President has confirmed that the Commission's antitrust investigation should not be suspended. The Commission's investigation remains ongoing,” the Commission said in a statement. Sunnyvale, California-based AMD was also pleased with the ruling. “We are not surprised by the Court's decision to reject Intel's application. The Order is entirely consistent with the continuous and clear case law on this issue and Intel's appeal was simply an attempt to delay the Commission's decision making process,” said Tom McCoy, AMD's executive vice president of legal, corporate and public affairs in a statement.
As it was expected, Intel isn't pleased with the ruling given on Tuesday, but a company spokesman said that the ruling would have no impact on the antitrust proceedings. What this basically means is that the proceedings against Intel will continue as they were started and that, for the time being, AMD has benefited from a relatively small victory.