14 DAY TRIAL // The European Commission surely keeps itself busy as after all the racket and buzz that followed the official antitrust charges pressed against the most important chips manufacturing company in the world, Intel, the same body presented sometime ago another set for charges, this time against the memory developer Rambus and against mobile chip producer Qualcomm.
Returning to the European Commission versus Intel case of unlawful business practices, the European antitrust regulating body charged Intel with reducing product price tags below their production cost and offering huge rebates or threatening its business partners in order to make them drop any contracts with Advanced Micro Devices.
According to the European law, Intel has until the 8th of October to formally respond to these accusations, even if the legal branch of the company stated that the European Commission made a mistake and the chip manufacturing outfit always supported and promoted fairness in its business model.
Now, as the date for presenting its official point of view passed, Intel is asking the Commission for some more time in order to prepare its response. According to the news site news.com, an official from the European Union said that Intel is asking for a delay and that its request is now under consideration. "We have received a request for an extension from Intel and it is still under consideration'', he said.
As the case of unlawful business practices is strong and there are a lot of money in the middle, Intel will have to be very careful in its approach to this situation, especially since if found guilty it could receive a fine of around 10 percent of its entire global annual revenues while being closely monitored for a long time. As the Commission is the ultimate antitrust regulator in the European Union it seems that it takes a rather dim view on the hardware manufacturing companies from the United States that are breaking the law through their business practices or "unreasonable royalties".