US ANTITRUST regulators were moving towards filing a complaint against Intel after the European Union (EU) fined the world’s biggest chip maker 1,45bn for engaging in anticompetitive practices, sources said on Friday.
Three of the four commissioners on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which opened a formal inquiry in June last year, are in favour of filing a complaint against Intel, said the sources who asked not to be named.
“They said it could be a matter of weeks or a matter of months when the vote happens,” one source said.
FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz and commissioners Thomas Rosch and Pamela Jones Harbour are in favour of filing a complaint against Intel, whose microprocessors power more than 80% of the world’s PCs, the sources said.
Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy on Friday said: “Our business practices are lawful and … (work) to the benefit of consumers.
“We certainly have been working closely with the FTC as they conduct their investigation. We would hope that the speculation is incorrect ,” Mulloy said.
Europe, South Korean and Japanese authorities have already moved against Intel for antitrust violations.
The EU fined Intel à 1,06bn for practices such as paying computer makers to postpone or cancel plans to launch products that used chips from rival advanced micro devices (AMD); providing illegal, secret rebates so computer makers would use mostly or entirely Intel chips; and paying a major retailer to stock only computers with its chips.
Japan’s trade commission concluded in 2005 that Intel violated the country’s anti-monopoly act. In June last year, South Korea fined Intel about 26m, finding it offered rebates to PC makers in return for not buying AMD microprocessors.
In 1999, the FTC and Intel settled charges that the chip maker used its market power to defend its dominance of the microprocessor market.
The much smaller AMD has long accused Intel of abusing its dominance of the 280bn chip market and filed its own lawsuit in 2005, but that case has not yet gone to trial.
Normally in antitrust cases, the FTC would simply require that anticompetitive conduct be stopped, but it can demand money in the rare cases of egregious conduct, said David Balto, a former FTC policy director. Reuters