CORRECTED - Intel asks court for more time with EU charges

Tue Oct 14, 2008 12:44pm EDT
 
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(Corrects spelling of spokesman's name to Mulloy instead of Molloy)

BRUSSELS, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Intel (INTC.O) has asked the European Union's second highest court for more time to respond to EU charges that it paid a retailer to favour PCs using its computer chips.

The Commission issued charges against the world's biggest chipmaker in July, alleging that the U.S. company had paid a retailer to refrain from selling computers with chips made by competitor Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.N).

Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said the company has filed an appeal with the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg related to the charges.

"This is a procedural issue. The specifics of the filing are confidential but Intel has taken this step in order to insure that it has the ability to conduct a full and fair defence of the company. We believe this is a fundamental fairness issue," Mulloy said.

The EU Competition Commission disagreed.

"The Commission considers it gave ample time to Intel to respond to the objections compared with equivalent cases with other companies," her spokesman, Jonathan Todd, said.

The "statement of objections" the Commission filed in July was on top of charges in 2007 that Intel gave computer makers rebates to limit their use of AMD chips or avoid them altogether. (Reporting by Huw Jones and David Lawsky in San Francisco; Editing by Greg Mahlich)

 
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