EU Court of Justice rejects Philips’ appeal against smart card chip cartel fine

The Court of Justice of the European Union has completely dismissed Philips’ appeal against a previous judgment. The 2016 judgment concerned the finding that there was a cartel of chip manufacturers that agreed on prices.

Infineon and Philips demanded that the Court of Justice annul a judgment of the General Court of the European Union at the end of 2016. In that judgment, the court upheld a fine for the companies for price fixing. According to Philips, the General Court misjudged evidence and erred in law in finding that the company’s conduct restricted competition. The EU Court dismissed these arguments and completely dismissed the appeal. This confirms the decision of the European Commission on the presence of the chip cartel and the resulting fine for Philips.

That decision was made in September 2014. The Commission then fined Philips twenty million euros for coordinating prices with other makers of smart card chips. This took place between 2003 and 2005, before Philips divested its chips division and continued as NXP.

The other makers were Renesas, Samsung and Infineon. However, Renesas did not have to pay anything because this company exposed the cartel. Samsung received a 30% reduction for providing important information and Infineon also had to pay less because the company only made agreements with Samsung and Renesas.

Infineon nevertheless appealed. The company contested, among other things, that there had been 11 unlawful contacts with Samsung and Renesas, as found by the Commission. The accusation before the EU Court was that the General Court of the European Union had only examined five of the eleven contested contacts. The CJEU agrees with Infineon that the judicial review was incomplete and the fine was therefore insufficiently checked. With regard to Infineon, the Court of Justice refers the case back to the General Court.