The General
Court has dismissed an appeal against the European Commission's decision to
impose a fine of EUR 242,042,000 on Qualcomm for infringing Article 102 of the
TFEU by engaging in predatory pricing.
In July 2019
the Commission found that Qualcomm abused a dominant position in the global
market for UMTS baseband chipsets by supplying UMTS chipsets to Huawei and ZTE,
at below cost prices, with the intention of eliminating Icera, who was then its
main competitor.
Qualcomm alleged
that the Commission erred in defining the relevant market, applied the
incorrect legal standard, and that its theory of predation was illogical.
Qualcomm also
raised various procedural irregularities and errors in the Commission’s reasoning.
The General
Court rejected Qualcomm's arguments in their entirety.
However the
General Court accepted Qualcomm’s plea concerning the calculation of the amount
of the fine. The Court found that the
Commission departed, without justification, from the methodology laid down in
its 2006 Fining Guidelines. The General
Court found that the Commission erred in calculating the basic amount of the
fine by adding together the value of sales made by Qualcomm during the second
half of 2009, in 2010, and in the first half of 2011, instead of by multiplying
the value of sales made during the last calendar year by the number of years of
participation in the infringement
The General
Court recalculated the fine to be imposed on Qualcomm, setting it at
EUR238,732,659.33 representing a reduction in the fine of approximately EUR 3.3
million.
The judgment
is a victory for the Commission’s substantive analysis. The reduction in the
fine indicates that there can be monetary benefits in contesting the level of
the fine However, in this case, a question may be asked as to whether the
reduction in the penalty was outweighed by the legal costs and involvement in a
lengthy appeal, notwithstanding the points of legal principle at stake. It remains to be seen whether Qualcomm will
fight on to the Court of Justice.
Case
T-671/19, Qualcomm v Commission EU:T:2024:626
No comments:
Post a Comment