Reuters reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter, that the European Union’s antitrust body will not appeal a court ruling to quash a 997 million euro ($991 million) fine on U.S. chip maker Qualcomm because of difficulties in persuading the court to The reasonableness of the company’s penalty.
In its June ruling, the General Court, Europe’s second-largest court in Luxembourg, severely criticized the European Commission’s handling of the case, saying continued violations affected Qualcomm’s defense rights. In addition, the judge also held that the alleged antitrust analysis of Qualcomm’s payments to Apple (AAPL-US) was invalid because the Executive Committee did not take into account all relevant facts.
The ruling is a setback for European Commission competition chief Margrethe Vestager’s plan to crack down on the monopoly of big tech companies, who has ordered Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL-US) to pay dozens of billion euros in fines and investigations into Amazon (AMZN-US), Apple, and Facebook parent company Meta (META-US).
By the time of writing, the European Commission had not commented on whether to appeal to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
Qualcomm’s lawsuit dates back to 2018, when the European Commission determined that from 2011 to 2016, Qualcomm paid Apple billions of dollars in exchange for exclusive use of Qualcomm’s chips in its iPhone and iPad products, thereby crowding out Other competitors including Intel (INTC-US).
Vestager faces a new test on Sept. 14, when the UK general court will rule on Google’s proposed acceleration, which was hit with a sky-high 4.34 billion euros ($4.34 billion) retaliation for using its Android mobile operating system to crowd out rivals. Monopoly fines.
Before the deadline, Qualcomm (QCOM-US) shares fell 1.13% in pre-market trading, and the share price was tentatively reported at $136.81.
