Clouds of antitrust loom heavy in USA
US media would have us believe that American antitrust regulators are rapidly racing towards filing an antitrust complaint against Intel, just months after the European Union slapped the chipmaker with a whopping $1.45 billion fine for what it found to be anticompetitive practices.
According to Reuters, a vote in the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) could be "a matter of weeks or a matter of months" away, which, while not very specific, still indicates some sort of a definite timeline before charges are brought.
Apparently three out of the four commissioners on the FTC - which kicked off a formal probe back in June 2008 - are in favor of filing a complaint against Intel, including FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz and Commissioners Thomas Rosch and Pamela Jones Harbour. Reuters claims to know this via "sources, who asked not to be named."
On May 13 2009, Intel - which holds over 80 per cent of the microprocessor market worldwide - was found guilty by an EU commission and fined €1.06 billion. The commission claimed the chipmaker had violated EC Treaty antitrust rules under Article 82; abusing its dominant market position "by engaging in illegal anticompetitive practices to exclude competitors from the market for computer chips called x86 central processing units (CPUs)".
The EU also found Intel guilty of giving "wholly or partially hidden rebates to computer manufacturers on condition that they bought all, or almost all, their x86 CPUs from Intel," and directly paying off OEMs to stop or delay the launches of products containing its competitors' chips.
The commission said it also found Intel guilty of making "direct payments to a major retailer on condition it stock only computers with Intel x86 CPUs," saying that these moves "effectively prevented customers - and ultimately consumers - from choosing alternative products."
"By undermining its competitors' ability to compete on the merits of their products, Intel's actions undermined competition and innovation" according to the EU commission, which ordered Intel to put an immediate end to its antitrust behavior.
