The Balls on Intel...

Lakados

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Feb 3, 2014
Messages
10,276
So Intel managed a while back to get the EU's 2009 $1.2B anti-trust fine thrown out
https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-wins-appeal-against-12-bln-eu-antitrust-fine-2022-01-26/
https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/27/intel_eu_antitrust_fine/

So here's how you know they have a pair on them since they already paid it and the EU courts threw it out, they want the interest back from that $1.2B, which comes out to a tidy $625 million.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/20/intel_antitrust_eu/
 
Good, because the EU makes a habit out of fining companies as a means of "taxation" to make up for budget shortfalls. Maybe they'll think twice before their next round of fines...

Regardless, we know for a fact that Intel was anti competitive and attempted many, many ways to get AMD shut down in those anti competitive practices. Oh well, guess a lot of folks would rather we pay $1800 for an 8 core processor in 2022.
 
Agnostically speaking, the meta question is whether governmental bodies should be liable for interest when a verdict is reversed. This must already be part of case law, but I am not a lawyer. I would imagine that the injured party should be owed something for being out the money that could have otherwise been put to use, but the number in the OP is a pretty big ask.
 
Agnostically speaking, the meta question is whether governmental bodies should be liable for interest when a verdict is reversed. This must already be part of case law, but I am not a lawyer. I would imagine that the injured party should be owed something for being out the money that could have otherwise been put to use, but the number in the OP is a pretty big ask.

When you hold 1.2 billion dollars for 12 years or so, that's a relatively low percentage. How they came up with the number isn't astronomical. That interest rate looks to be set by the eu court. It'll be fun to see if that sticks.

Intel said its claim is based on an interest rate equivalent to the European Central Bank’s refinancing rate of 1.25% beginning from May 2009, and that this should be increased to 3.5% from August 2009 to February this year when the EU repaid the company fine, minus 38 million euros in an interest amount paid to Intel by the Commission.
 
Agnostically speaking, the meta question is whether governmental bodies should be liable for interest when a verdict is reversed. This must already be part of case law, but I am not a lawyer. I would imagine that the injured party should be owed something for being out the money that could have otherwise been put to use, but the number in the OP is a pretty big ask.
According to EU law Intel is due this, but they don’t have the money and are giving Intel the runaround as this has never really happened to them before. There is also some disagreements on how that interest was calculated it could be slightly more or less than that.
It also gets complicated because Intel was later sued by AMD based on this ruling so with it reversed to this degree if they do pay it back then AMD might have to similarly pay Intel back which could cause AMD to have to sue the EU for their initial mis management of the case and it’s findings.

If they pay up it has the potential to go very sideways.
 
When you hold 1.2 billion dollars for 12 years or so, that's a relatively low percentage. How they came up with the number isn't astronomical. That interest rate looks to be set by the eu court. It'll be fun to see if that sticks.
So how much in tax savings did they get to write off because 1.2B was a "business expense" and brought their gross income down?
 
So how much in tax savings did they get to write off because 1.2B was a "business expense" and brought their gross income down?

Without knowing eu law, it's hard to know how the whole circle goes. Someone with far greater eu knowledge & global tax understanding is free to chime in how that works.

I'm personally not going to speculate, since I strait up do not know anything other than what was hand fed to me. :p
 
So Intel managed a while back to get the EU's 2009 $1.2B anti-trust fine thrown out
https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-wins-appeal-against-12-bln-eu-antitrust-fine-2022-01-26/
https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/27/intel_eu_antitrust_fine/

So here's how you know they have a pair on them since they already paid it and the EU courts threw it out, they want the interest back from that $1.2B, which comes out to a tidy $625 million.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/20/intel_antitrust_eu/

Don't see what is so ballsy about it. It was tossed. EU should pay the interest. Next time bring an iron clad case. If you can't nail them in your own courts, clearly it was a waste of time... and Intel shouldn't be out money over it. They should also bring suit for all legal fees incurred if they haven't already.
 
Both of these entities need to go out of business.
That's not how things work. Intel goes out of business and AMD is free to become the new Intel, but probably worse. Government ain't going nowhere because there must always be a ruler. You get ride of government and suddenly we have fascism, which isn't better. If there's no rule or law then someone will come in and become a dictator. Don't think your home full of guns is going to do a damn thing against a trained group of people.
Regardless, we know for a fact that Intel was anti competitive and attempted many, many ways to get AMD shut down in those anti competitive practices. Oh well, guess a lot of folks would rather we pay $1800 for an 8 core processor in 2022.
I don't know why the EU overturned the fine? We all knew that Intel was preventing AMD from competing and yet the EU throws it out? They should just be like "sorry we were right the first time so no $1.2B for you".
 
That's not how things work. Intel goes out of business and AMD is free to become the new Intel, but probably worse. Government ain't going nowhere because there must always be a ruler. You get ride of government and suddenly we have fascism, which isn't better. If there's no rule or law then someone will come in and become a dictator. Don't think your home full of guns is going to do a damn thing against a trained group of people.

I don't know why the EU overturned the fine? We all knew that Intel was preventing AMD from competing and yet the EU throws it out? They should just be like "sorry we were right the first time so no $1.2B for you".
Not to be picky, but fascism is literally the OPPOSITE of no government. I believe anarchy might be the word you're looking for? And best not to assume what level of training some of us might or might not have for kinetic situations. ;)
 
That's not how things work. Intel goes out of business and AMD is free to become the new Intel, but probably worse. Government ain't going nowhere because there must always be a ruler. You get ride of government and suddenly we have fascism, which isn't better. If there's no rule or law then someone will come in and become a dictator. Don't think your home full of guns is going to do a damn thing against a trained group of people.

I don't know why the EU overturned the fine? We all knew that Intel was preventing AMD from competing and yet the EU throws it out? They should just be like "sorry we were right the first time so no $1.2B for you".

Someone in the EU (probably Germany) wants to bring semiconductor manufacturing back.
AMD doesn't own any FABs so Intel looks like a decent candidate, especially considering that blowing off a 1.2B fine along with potential interest payback looks pretty sweet to Intel.
The real question is - will Intel do anything worthwhile with this windfall or spend it on virtue-signalling, exec comp, or stock buybacks instead.

I can respect that the EU fines big tech corporations for anti-consumer behavior (even though - as evident by some of the posts here - most consumers are too braindead to realize they're being screwed over repeatedly), but question how much of that is actually driven by ethics and/or morals versus just good-old European bribery.
 
"However, the saga is far from over. In April, the European Commission said it would appeal the court’s decision to overturn the fine. That appeal is ongoing."

There's no question that Intel's actions were anti-competitive. It was a textbook example antitrust behavior. The General Court decided that the EC's analysis was "incomplete" because...
It also gets complicated because Intel was later sued by AMD based on this ruling so with it reversed to this degree if they do pay it back then AMD might have to similarly pay Intel back which could cause AMD to have to sue the EU for their initial mis management of the case and it’s findings.
😵 At this point, maybe they should just settle the matter out of court with an overclocking contest.
 
That's not how things work. Intel goes out of business and AMD is free to become the new Intel, but probably worse. Government ain't going nowhere because there must always be a ruler. You get ride of government and suddenly we have fascism, which isn't better. If there's no rule or law then someone will come in and become a dictator. Don't think your home full of guns is going to do a damn thing against a trained group of people.

I don't know why the EU overturned the fine? We all knew that Intel was preventing AMD from competing and yet the EU throws it out? They should just be like "sorry we were right the first time so no $1.2B for you".

Code:
often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control
 
Quite a few entities are way out of line.. Remember when Nvidia thought they could buy Arm?
ARM is not in a good place right now, might have been better for ARM if they did. I mean it would have been worse for us some 4 years from now but certainly better for ARM.
 
Not to be picky, but fascism is literally the OPPOSITE of no government. I believe anarchy might be the word you're looking for? And best not to assume what level of training some of us might or might not have for kinetic situations. ;)
No no, it would be fascism. If you were to simply delete the government and leave a void then someone will step in and take over, usually with an iron fist. You can't have no government as there must always be a government of some sort. The person that takes over will usually take over the treasure in mind and will distribute it among his allies to please them and keep his order. Usually ruled by a dictator which then creates fascism.

Similar situation goes for deleting Intel in that AMD becomes the only manufacturer of x86 chips which AMD is free to price gouge however they please. So of course we migrate to ARM because like Apple, ARM platforms are known for their open nature. :rolleyes: Just kidding, most ARM platforms are locked down harder than someone who took too much Viagra. There's a monkey's paw for wishing something to simply disappear without understanding that the void it leaves behind must be filled, usually by something worse.
The real question is - will Intel do anything worthwhile with this windfall or spend it on virtue-signalling, exec comp, or stock buybacks instead.
Definitely stock buybacks as well as the others. Whatever makes them to most money and virtue-signalling and buybacks do that far more effectively. Intel is selling out of chips, so making better ones doesn't matter for the moment. It will in the long run and they will but for now Intel isn't worried.
 
"However, the saga is far from over. In April, the European Commission said it would appeal the court’s decision to overturn the fine. That appeal is ongoing."

There's no question that Intel's actions were anti-competitive. It was a textbook example antitrust behavior. The General Court decided that the EC's analysis was "incomplete" because...

😵 At this point, maybe they should just settle the matter out of court with an overclocking contest.
7392939_gal.jpg
 
ARM is not in a good place right now, might have been better for ARM if they did. I mean it would have been worse for us some 4 years from now but certainly better for ARM.
Not really... ARM would have slowly (or rapidly) exited from all but Nvidia and Apple products. Over a few year span they would have went from a Nvidia owned entity to being another Nvidia division and more slowly into the end of the ARM name. (first revision where Nvidia could say they merged Nvidia ideas into ARMs instructions it would have gotten a new name)

I guess we'll never know for sure how it would have went now... but I suspect Nvidia wouldn't have been any different then any other mega corp that made that sort of purchase. That is pretty much how they all go.

Seeing is this is an Intel thread... I am pretty sure Nvidia would have done the same thing Intel did, and down the road we would have saw ARM just like x86. Early days when x86 was changing the world and Intel couldn't produce chips for all the demand, they licensed x86. Once they could supply the world they didn't want the competition anymore. Nvidia would see the need for licenses for as long as it would take for them to figure they could supply the demand themselves. (seeing as basically everyone orders from the same two fabs... that wouldn't have taken them long) lol
 
Not really... ARM would have slowly (or rapidly) exited from all but Nvidia and Apple products. Over a few year span they would have went from a Nvidia owned entity to being another Nvidia division and more slowly into the end of the ARM name. (first revision where Nvidia could say they merged Nvidia ideas into ARMs instructions it would have gotten a new name)

I guess we'll never know for sure how it would have went now... but I suspect Nvidia wouldn't have been any different then any other mega corp that made that sort of purchase. That is pretty much how they all go.

Seeing is this is an Intel thread... I am pretty sure Nvidia would have done the same thing Intel did, and down the road we would have saw ARM just like x86. Early days when x86 was changing the world and Intel couldn't produce chips for all the demand, they licensed x86. Once they could supply the world they didn't want the competition anymore. Nvidia would see the need for licenses for as long as it would take for them to figure they could supply the demand themselves. (seeing as basically everyone orders from the same two fabs... that wouldn't have taken them long) lol
Not even close, Nvidia would not have made it so you could sell fewer chips. Their goal was to replace the graphics components with theirs and add a few of their proprietary technologies as the norm. By the nature of the mobile market and how quickly hardware gets replaced they would quickly have their standards become the overwhelmingly dominant ones in the market. With that dominance they could exert a lot more pressure on game developers to get Nvidia tech embedded into the games. This would give them what they need to push AMD from the console space as developers would then be “requesting” Nvidia be included to make ports easier between. PC, Console, and Mobile devices.
This would also have accelerated their Chromebook and cloud gaming plans.
I would have also expected them to partner with AIB’s for boards featuring their sockets they use for their existing ARM chips they sell.

Had Nvidia been allowed to purchase ARM over 5 years we would have seen more chips, better graphics, and better ports. But it would have strangled AMD from the market, and killed off a few dozen open standards in the process.

Nvidia has no fabs unlike Intel, they don’t have to worry about competition in that way. They would just keep licensing out their tech as they claw market share from Intel and AMD.

It would have been better for ARM and Nvidia but consumer choice would have been severely sacrificed in the process and that is why regulators shut it down. Nvidia wouldn’t have needed to make any changes to the licensing agreements and legally couldn’t they might have been able to raise rates slowly over time but it would be decades before they could do anything drastic.
 
I'm not sure this analogy passes the smell test
Lets do a test and assume you're an iPhone user. Lets see who can install an NES emulator on their phones the fastest. 123 GO! I win because you can't as it's against Apple's rules. Lets see who can block Youtube ads. That's right you can't do that either. If only there was a way to side load applications outside of the App store. While Android is better at this, it's not like Android doesn't make it harder than it needs to be. Every Android phone has it's own custom rom because all Android phones are different when it comes to how the OS is handled. It's not like x86 PC's where you can just install whatever you want and it all follows a standard. The only ARM devices that isn't locked down are Raspberry Pi's.
 
Lets do a test and assume you're an iPhone user. Lets see who can install an NES emulator on their phones the fastest. 123 GO! I win because you can't as it's against Apple's rules. Lets see who can block Youtube ads. That's right you can't do that either. If only there was a way to side load applications outside of the App store. While Android is better at this, it's not like Android doesn't make it harder than it needs to be. Every Android phone has it's own custom rom because all Android phones are different when it comes to how the OS is handled. It's not like x86 PC's where you can just install whatever you want and it all follows a standard. The only ARM devices that isn't locked down are Raspberry Pi's.
WTF does this have to do with viagara?
 
Yeah, why are we talking about Viagra? Let's stick to the original thread topic: Intel's balls. Oh, on second thought... :unsure:
I don't know why the EU overturned the fine? We all knew that Intel was preventing AMD from competing and yet the EU throws it out? They should just be like "sorry we were right the first time so no $1.2B for you".
I was curious about that as well, mostly because I wanted to understand the potential effect on future antitrust cases. If you follow some of the links from the OP, you can work your way back to 2009. And you'll find external links to the court cases too. Here are several to start your adventure:

https://www.theregister.com/2017/09/07/intel_antitrust_case_analysis/
https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/08/eu_to_appeal_intel_general_court/

Press releases from the European Court of Justice and the General Court:
https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2022-01/cp220016en.pdf (Jan 2022)
https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2017-09/cp170090en.pdf (Sep 2017)

Judgement of the General Court: Extended Edition with Behind-the-Scenes Bonus Material (Jan 2022)
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:62009TJ0286(01)&from=EN
 
I want to invest my money in the EU too, 50% return in 6 months? Not even obvious scams claim that much!
 
don't know why the EU overturned the fine? We all knew that Intel was preventing AMD from competing and yet the EU throws it out? They should just be like "sorry we were right the first time so no $1.2B for you".
Because there is nothing illegal with offering discounts for bulk purchasing. Saying if you order 1 you pay X, order 1000 and you pay X-5%, but if you order in 25,000 you get X-20% is standard business practice. Now of course they are going to try to sell what they buy so if they order 200,000 of something you better believe they are going to do their best to move it.
That’s not Intel saying, “you can’t buy more than X processors from them” that’s the OEMs saying “We purchased 500,000 processors from Intel already, we’re only expecting to move 503,000 units this quarter.”
 
Because there is nothing illegal with offering discounts for bulk purchasing. Saying if you order 1 you pay X, order 1000 and you pay X-5%, but if you order in 25,000 you get X-20% is standard business practice. Now of course they are going to try to sell what they buy so if they order 200,000 of something you better believe they are going to do their best to move it.
That’s not Intel saying, “you can’t buy more than X processors from them” that’s the OEMs saying “We purchased 500,000 processors from Intel already, we’re only expecting to move 503,000 units this quarter.”

So, the manipulation of the market through "legal" terms is now legal, eh? From that point of view, Microsoft should have never been found guilty as a monopoly because, after all, it was the OEM's choice to install the Windows OS, Microsoft did not force them to do anything.
 
Because there is nothing illegal with offering discounts for bulk purchasing. Saying if you order 1 you pay X, order 1000 and you pay X-5%, but if you order in 25,000 you get X-20% is standard business practice. Now of course they are going to try to sell what they buy so if they order 200,000 of something you better believe they are going to do their best to move it.
It wasn't the discounts or rebates per se that were a problem, but the conditions attached to them.
That’s not Intel saying, “you can’t buy more than X processors from them” that’s the OEMs saying “We purchased 500,000 processors from Intel already, we’re only expecting to move 503,000 units this quarter.”
There's quite a bit more to it, but the former is not far from what happened. In reality it was worse, where Intel's statement was closer to "you have to buy all of your processors from us", at least in some cases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel#Antitrust_allegations_and_litigation_(2005–2009)
https://www.theregister.com/2009/05/13/intel_europe_fine/
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_09_745
 
Because there is nothing illegal with offering discounts for bulk purchasing. Saying if you order 1 you pay X, order 1000 and you pay X-5%, but if you order in 25,000 you get X-20% is standard business practice. Now of course they are going to try to sell what they buy so if they order 200,000 of something you better believe they are going to do their best to move it.
That’s not Intel saying, “you can’t buy more than X processors from them” that’s the OEMs saying “We purchased 500,000 processors from Intel already, we’re only expecting to move 503,000 units this quarter.”
The problem wasn't the discount but that part of the deal was that they must buy their products exclusively from them. Also, without the discounts to exclusivity then your Intel based PC would cost more than someone else's Intel based PC who took the discounts to exclusivity. Meaning that anyone who sold AMD would have to exclusively sell AMD as their Intel offerings would cost more than their competitors. You couldn't ignore the deal either as Intel products were still far more popular than AMD, meaning that AMD had no chance to compete since Intel made it impossible for PC manufacturers to go with them.
 
The problem wasn't the discount but that part of the deal was that they must buy their products exclusively from them. Also, without the discounts to exclusivity then your Intel based PC would cost more than someone else's Intel based PC who took the discounts to exclusivity. Meaning that anyone who sold AMD would have to exclusively sell AMD as their Intel offerings would cost more than their competitors. You couldn't ignore the deal either as Intel products were still far more popular than AMD, meaning that AMD had no chance to compete since Intel made it impossible for PC manufacturers to go with them.
The reason this got thrown out is because they didn’t have any documents that said this. They had industry insiders saying that this was the way it is but no paper trail.
All the other lawsuits Intel faced were because they lost this one in the EU.

So they have some ex Dell employees say they can’t sell AMD because Intel said if they did they would loose their refunds and kickbacks. Now they do see Intel making refunds and kickbacks. But Intel accounting showed it was because they had exceeded a certain threshold for orders so they get kickbacks. So Intels paper trail shows them not doing anything illegal, but the EU took some people at their word, but those people had no proof but the EU took it as fact.

But let’s be honest here, Intel was sure as shit playing dirty. But the EU in their desire to call Intel out fudged some things that should not be fudged in a court of law and Intel finally had a chance to call them out on it.

You can’t go to a real courtroom with loads of signed paperwork disproving your argument then throw it out because a few former employees say it’s a smokescreen but then say the proof that it’s bullshit doesn’t exist because their too good at covering their tracks.
So Intel lost then they used that loss as the excuse they needed to raid the Intel offices for proof to backup their claims while others jumped onboard to also sue. Then after 10 years find no legal evidence to back up the initial guilty verdict.

Yeah it’s probably the old Intel guard being good enough to not leave a paper trail, but the EU’s case was poorly built and they’ve spent the last 12 years trying to fill in the gaps they left and failed. So now we get to sit back and watch the Empire Strike Back.
 
Seems like if they could find some numbers showing somebody bought more than X product and didn't get the same discount as Y company, that may be compelling evidence. Of course, it would have to be a single bulk purchase or a contract for several, and might not be considered compelling evidence.
 
Seems like if they could find some numbers showing somebody bought more than X product and didn't get the same discount as Y company, that may be compelling evidence. Of course, it would have to be a single bulk purchase or a contract for several, and might not be considered compelling evidence.
If they could they spent 10 years digging and failed too. So either it’s not there or the do groups the EU lawyers assigned to it were in incompetent.
 
How is this ballsy? They're suing back for what they are entitled to after having been wronged.
 
Back
Top