Following in the wake of the European Commission's issuance of a supplemental Statement of Objections (SSOs) to Intel (see post below), Robert Lande, professor of law at University of Baltimore and a director of the American Antitrust Institute, published a provocative opinion piece in the Baltimore Sun last week: "World War 4.0: Consumers will win with pursuit, punishment of any anticompetitive practices by Intel."
See the post on the AAI website here.
Lande notes the parallels between the emerging actions around the globe against Intel and the actions successfully waged against Microsoft's abuse of its dominant power of the PC operating system market in the 1990s and early 2000s. "Together, Microsoft and Intel monopolize the two key products that comprise PCs." And just as Microsoft employed a variety of anticompetitive tactics lacking business justification to maintain its monopoly, Lande notes the EC's SSO indicates Intel may have done the same thing.
As we observed below, the EC suggests, for example, that Intel may have made payments in order to induce a leading computer manufacturer to delay the planned launch of a product line incorporating an AMD based CPU.
Lande: "To use an Olympic-year analogy, Intel is not being accused of taking steroids to run faster. Rather, it allegedly tripped its only rival."
Although the World War analogy is provocative, Lande is certainly right that the charges against Intel potentially mean that "tens of millions of computer users" could have been affected.
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