The EU's General Court annulled the 1.06 billion euro fine that competition regulators issued Intel in 2009 for allegedly using illegal sales tactics to shut out smaller rival AMD.

The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s top antitrust enforcers, had fined Intel for abusing its dominant position in the global market for x86 microprocessors with a strategy to exclude rivals by using rebates.

The General Court upheld the penalty in 2014 but three years later the EU’s Court of Justice ruled that the fine could be sent back for further legal review, citing a legal error.

This time around, the General Court found that “the analysis carried out by the Commission is incomplete” and did not legally establish that rebates Intel was giving to customers was anticompetitive.