Qualcomm succeeded in removing the monopoly in the EU after the United States.

The European Court ruled on Monday that the European Commission (EC) imposed a fine of 997 million euros (about 1.33 trillion won) on Qualcomm in 2018.

The issue of this lawsuit was that Qualcomm provided $ 100 billion in rebates to Apple to install its chips on the iPhone and iPad from 2011 to 2016.

The EC judged Qualcomm’s actions to be a competition. By enhancing a large rebate to Apple, it has eliminated the incentives to use Intel and other LTE chipsets.

Qualcomm has been illegally excluding competitors from the LTE chipset market for five years, said Margrete Vestager, vice chairman of the EC vice chairman.

But the court’s judgment was different. In the process of defining Qualcomm’s actions as illegal, there were not many procedural errors. In particular, the court’s judgment was that they concluded that monopoly acts were urgently monopolized without reviewing the overall market situation.

■ The US FTC, Qualcomm bridle the ‘monopoly company’ and defeated the appeal court

Qualcomm was not only involved in antitrust lawsuits in the EU. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also filed an antitrust lawsuit against Qualcomm in 2017.

At that time, Qualcomm’s business practices, which were a problem with the FTC, had four major business practices.

first. No License-NO Chips Policy

second. Incentive program (License cost reduction when using Qualcomm chip)

third. Rejection of patent technology for rival chipset companies

fourth. Exclusive deal with Apple.

Of the four issues, exclusive deals with Apple were also a problem in the EU. Qualcomm, who lost to the FTC in the US first trial court, reversed the appeals.

The US Court of Appeals decided that the contract with Qualcomm in 2011 and 2013 could not be seen as interfering with competition to maintain the monopoly status of the CDMA and LTE market.

At the time, the US Court of Appeals said, According to the Federal Evangelism Act, competition is illegal. But extremely competitive acts are not illegal.

The judgment of the European general court was similar. When Apple used Qualcomm’s chipset, he pointed out that there was no such substitution, and the EC had been urgently concluded that it had interfered with competition by rebate contracts. The EC has not reviewed all related facts, including the market environment.

Florian Müller, who runs a patented site Force Peturns, also questioned EC’s decision that Qualcomm had been involved in competition.

European
The monopoly contract itself is not illegal, he said. There are also a lot of legitimate monopoly contracts.

In particular, Müller pointed out that Qualcomm had a need to prevent Apple from buying another company’s chipset. But it’s not an appropriate question in a situation where there is no competitor that can meet Apple’s needs, he said.

■ It is much more difficult to determine the monopoly in the hardware market

The US IT media protocol pointed out that this ruling once again showed how difficult it was to monopolize hardware companies.

The EU has successfully sanctioned the market monopoly of Google and other US Internet service companies. Google, which discriminated against competitors in the comparison shopping market, was fined 2.4 billion euros.

The European Court, which raised Qualcomm’s hand, admitted sanctions against Google. The general court ruled that last year, the act of preferring their content in the comparison shopping market is a violation of the monopoly law.

The same is true of the ‘Digital Market Law’ and ‘Digital Service Act’, which was recently passed by the European Parliament. In particular, the Digital Market Act strongly sanctions platform operators such as Google and Facebook to prefer their services or content.

However, on the hardware market, it is a bit more stringent to recognize monopoly. In January, the European Court ruled that the EC’s actions, which imposed an euros fines of 1 billion euros, were unfair in January for abuse of monopoly status of the CPU market.

The ruling allows you to confirm that it is much more difficult to obtain an exclusive ruling in the hardware market, the protocol analyzes.