EU Court of Justice to deliver verdict on Intel anti-trust fine on Wednesday

The EU Court of Justice, Europe's highest court, is expected to deliver verdict on the Intel anti-trust fine imposed eight years ago on Wednesday.

The ruling will greatly impact how US companies reacted to EU legal penalties.

In 2009, Intel was hit with a $1.26 billion fine for abusing its dominant market position by using various marketing stratagems and has been fighting the case since then. (See: EU upholds 2009 penalty against Intel)

According to commentators, if the ruling were to go in favour of Intel, then US companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google, that had tended to accept EU anti-trust penalties, may consider fighting the EU in court as a viable option.

Companies like Qualcomm and Apple, which were still wrangling with the EU over legal issues might consider challenging the EU's decisions despite the costs and effort involved.

Intel was slapped with the biggest ever antitrust penalty when the EC ruled that Intel blocked rival Advanced Micro Systems (AMD) from the computer chip market, abusing its dominant market position.

After general court judges dismissed Intel's claim in 2014, the firm turned to the ECJ, its last option to fight against the fine.

However, court advisor, Nils Wahl, said in a recommendation in 2016 that Intel's appeal against the fine should be upheld and that the general court had not been able to establish that payments made by Intel were anti-competitive or that certain deals harmed consumers.

Google was slapped with a record-breaking €2.4 billion fine in June for favouring its own shopping results in search results, by EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager. (See: EU antitrust regulator to fine Google record €3 bn for manipulating search results)

The EU competition watchdog last week submitted details of how it intended to amend its results which it has until the end of September to do.

According to commentators, the tech giant could be in for an even larger fine over its Android operating system which some analysts estimate could surpass $6 billion. Last year, Vestager found Google in breach of competition rules as it favoured its own search, something Google has argued it does not do.