The Antitrust Week In Review

Here are some of the developments in antitrust news this past week that we found interesting and are following.

EU fines Google record $2.7 billion in first antitrust case. EU antitrust regulators hit Google with a record 2.42-billion-euro ($2.7 billion) fine, taking a tough line in the first of three investigations into the company’s dominance in searches and smartphones. It is the biggest fine the EU has ever imposed on a single company in an antitrust case, exceeding a 1.06-billion-euro sanction handed down to U.S. chipmaker Intel in 2009. The European Commission said the world’s most popular internet search engine has 90 days to stop favoring its own shopping service or face a further penalty per day of up to 5 percent of Alphabet’s average daily global turnover.

U.S. antitrust lawsuit against Qualcomm to proceed, judge rules. The Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against Qualcomm Inc can proceed, a federal judge ruled, meaning the iPhone chip supplier must now wage a fight with U.S. regulators even as it contests a separate $1 billion lawsuit filed by Apple Inc. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District of California in San Jose denied Qualcomm’s motion to dismiss the FTC’s lawsuit, saying the agency’s allegations would amount to anticompetitive behavior on Qualcomm’s part if proved true.

EU Antitrust Regulators Halt Qualcomm, NXP Deal Review. EU antitrust authorities have halted their scrutiny of Qualcomm’s $38 billion bid for NXP Semiconductors after the companies failed to provide relevant information. The European Commission opened a full-scale investigation on June 9 and had been scheduled to decide on the deal by Oct. 17. “Once the missing information is supplied by the parties, the clock is re-started and the deadline for the Commission’s decision is then adjusted accordingly,” the EU competition authority said in an email.

Top EU court to rule on Intel antitrust case on Sept 6. Europe’s top court will rule on Sept. 6 whether to uphold Intel’s appeal against a 1.06-billion-euro ($1.2 billion) EU antitrust fine, a case with ramifications for Google’s challenge against a record sanction handed out this week. The European Commission penalized U.S. chipmaker Intel in 2009 because it tried to squeeze out rival Advanced Micro Devices by giving rebates to PC makers Dell, Hewlett-Packard Co, NEC and Lenovo for buying most of their computer chips from Intel.