The ruling by the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the
European Unn (CJEU) will strengthen the European Commission's hand in other
antitrust investigations.
Qualcomm's run-ins with the Commission have seen it receive
total fines of 1.2 billion euros in two cases in the last three years for using
its market power to thwart rivals including Intel.
Its grievances with the EU competition enforcer date from
2017 when it was told to provide more information in a case in which it was
accused of predatory pricing between 2009 and 2011 to squash British phone
software maker Icera, subsequently bought by Nvidia Corp.
Qualcomm said the request exceeded the investigation's
scope. It took its case to the General Court, Europe's second-highest, but lost
its challenge in 2019. It then appealed to the CJEU.
The Court backed the EU antitrust watchdog.
"Having regard to the broad powers of investigation
conferred on the Commission by Regulation No 1/2003, it is for the Commission
to decide whether a particular item of information is necessary to enable it to
bring to light an infringement of the competition rules," judges said.
Qualcomm is the subject of a third case in which EU
enforcers are investigating whether it engaged in anti-competitive behaviour by
leveraging its market position in 5G modem chips in the radio frequency chip
market.
The case is C-466/19 P Qualcomm and Qualcomm Europe v
Commission.
($1 = 0.8271 euros) (Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by
Barbara Lewis)