Today the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) issued its long-awaited judgment in Intel Corporation Inc. v European Commission. It sets aside the judgment of the General Court (GC) on the basis that the judges failed to assess the effects of the loyalty rebate schemes implemented by Intel on competition in the EEA. The CJEU refers the case back to the GC.

Background

The Intel case concerns the supply of central processing units (CPUs) to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Following a complaint lodged in 2000 by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), the European Commission (Commission) investigated two types of conduct by Intel:

• Intel offered rebate schemes to four OEMs – Dell, Lenovo, HP and NEC – conditioned on them obtaining all or almost all of their requirements for x86 CPUs from Intel. In addition, Intel granted payments to one of its retailers, Media-Saturn-Holding (MSH), on the condition that it only sold computers containing Intel’s chips.
• Intel made payments to HP, Acer and Lenovo on the condition that these OEMs postponed, cancelled or limited distribution of products using CPUs from AMD.

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