BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court imposed a fine of Rs 10 lakh on Intel Technology India Private Limited and Intel Corporation while dismissing their plea against an order passed by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) on probing its warranty policy.
Justice Krishna S Dixit passed the order while dismissing the petition filed on August 9, 2019, against the CCI which had ordered an investigation into their warranty policy which “potentially resulted in denial of market access to parallel importers and re-sellers of boxed microprocessors for desktops and laptops”.
The court said that the petitioners hastily rushed to the court and unjustifiably secured an interim order that interdicted an inquiry of preliminary nature for all these years to the enormous prejudice of public interest. “This petition, besides being premature and absolutely devoid of merits, is an abortive attempt by the applicants to scuttle the innocuous statutory proceedings of the Commission.
Therefore, this is a fit case for dismissal with an exemplary cost of Rs 10 lakh to be payable to the CCI”, the court said, adding that it is hoped and expected that the long-pending investigation should be accomplished at the earliest.
The probe was ordered based on a complaint filed by Matrix Info Systems Private Limited in February 2019 alleging that its ‘warranty policy is in contravention of the Competition Act in as much as they were refusing to provide the warranty in India for boxed microprocessors which are imported from authorised sources abroad but not those sourced from the Intel authorised dealers in India.