The One Billion Euro Question for Intel: Moore’s Law or Murphy’s Law?

Abstract

Moore’s Law (in layman’s terms) states that the processing power of computers doubles every two years. Murphy’s Law states that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. The process of reform of the EU rules on abuse of dominance, which the Commission commenced more than a decade ago, falls somewhere in between the two. The number of court judgements on the topic of abuse of dominance has grown in recent years (although it has not quite doubled), but these judgements have not all moved in the same direction: some have supported the Commission’s aim to give more prominence to the analysis of economic effects, but others have undermined it. No case illustrates this better than the one concerning the exclusivity rebates offered by Intel, the chip-maker co-founded by Gordon Moore, who came up with the insight behind Moore’s Law. In this article, we first recall the context of the Intel abuse of dominance case. This case came after the Commission initiated efforts in promoting effects-based analysis in abuse of dominance cases. We briefly summarise the allegations against Intel and the different milestones of the case, from the Commission’s decision of May 20091 to the Court of Justice (CJEU) judgement of September 2017.2