Lawmakers Press On EU Antitrust Actions
Oregon Reps. Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat, and Greg Walden, a Republican, want Justice Department antitrust chief Christine Varney to view recent European antitrust rulings with a critical eye and weigh the impact of those decisions on U.S. high-tech firms such as Intel, Google, Microsoft, IBM and Qualcomm, CongressDaily's PM Edition reported Friday. Their effort comes on the heels of the European Commission's $1.45 billion judgment against Intel for excluding competitors from the market for chips known as x86 central processing units.
"That ruling is the latest evidence of a troublesome trend in Europe toward regulatory protectionism," they wrote in a draft letter circulating on Capitol Hill. Other successful U.S. companies have faced hefty fines, are under investigation, or possibly facing scrutiny from the Commission's competition directorate, they said. The Intel ruling "ignores the reality of a highly competitive marketplace," said the draft, noting that microprocessor prices have dropped drastically in the last decade. "The significant decrease in prices, together with the unprecedented increase in quality, speed, functionality and choice of microprocessors, reflects that market's robust health."
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