An Intel logo at the Intel Museum in Santa Clara Donovan Smith Black Jersey , California in file photo. The EU’s top court yesterday ordered a lower court to reconsider its rejection of an appeal by US chip giant Intel against one of the EU’s biggest-ever fines for breaking competition rules. The decision by the European Court of Justice keeps alive one of the longest running EU competition court cases in history that could impact similar cases against Google and chipmaker Qualcomm. — AFP EUROPE’S top judges dealt a rare blow to European Union antitrust regulators yesterday by sending their case against chipmaker Intel back to a lower court for an appeal.
In a move that may have ramifications for the EU watchdog’s cases against Qualcomm and Google, the EU Court of Justice said a court which had upheld a 1 billion euro (US$1.3 billion) European Commission fine against Intel should re-examine the US company’s appeal.
“The case is referred back to the General Court in order for it to examine the arguments put forward by Intel concerning the capacity of the rebates at issue to restrict competition,” the ECJ said in a statement.
The commission handed down the fine in 2009 Noah Spence Black Jersey , a record at the time, saying that Intel had tried to block rival Advanced Micro Devices by giving rebates to PC makers Dell, Hewlett-Packard Co Vernon Hargreaves III Black Jersey , NEC and Lenovo for buying most of their computer chips from Intel.
The ruling is good news for companies in the EU regulator’s crosshairs, Foad Hoseinian at law firm Freshfields said.
“This is a setback for the commission as it will be more closely scrutinized by the courts in the future. There is now a clear obligation to look at effects-based arguments,” he said.
Regulators have generally frowned upon rebates Kendell Beckwith Black Jersey , especially those offered by dominant companies, based on the theory that they are anti-competitive in nature, while firms say that enforcers have to prove that they have anti-competitive effects before sanctioning them.
“Companies will be more confident when they go to the commission and more corporations will have the appetite to take the commission to court on effects-based arguments Chris Godwin Black Jersey ,” Hoseinian said.
The commission said it would study the judgment carefully and that it was up to the General Court to review its decision. Intel said it was reviewing the court ruling.
The ruling raises the bar for the regulator when it comes to proving wrongdoing, said Rein Wesseling, a partner at law firm Stibbe.
“It forces the commission to be as economic in its approach in other cases as it did in Intel. This is encouraging for Qualcomm and Google Justin Evans Black Jersey ,” he said.
Google, which was hit with a landmark 2.42 billion euro fine in June over its Shopping service, is under fire over its Android smartphone operating system and online search advertising. Google has denied any wrongdoing.
US chipmaker Qualcomm O. J. Howard Black Jersey , meanwhile, faces EU charges of using anti-competitive methods to squeeze out British phone software maker Icera and of making illegal payments to a major customer for exclusively using its chipsets since 2011.
WASHINGTON, March 14 (Xinhua) -- A two-vaccine regimen intended to protect against the deadly Ebola virus induced a durable immune response in 100 percent of healthy adult volunteers one year after vaccination, results from a phase one clinical trial showed Tuesday.
Ebola virus disease is a severe, often fatal illness in humans. The virus is transmitted to people from wild animals and spreads in the human population through human-to-human transmission.
The new study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, involved two vaccine candidates, one used to stimulate or "prime" an initial immune response, and a second used to boost the body's response.
The trial was conducted by researchers at the University of Oxford, who enrolled healthy participants aged 18 to 50 in the United Kingdom.
Participants were selected randomly to receive either the two-vaccine regimen or saltwater injections.
Of the 75 participants who received the vaccine regimen, 64 remained in the study for a follow-up visit on day 360.
No serious vaccine-associated adverse events were observed, and all of the active vaccine recipients maintained antibodies to Ebola virus at day 360.
This is "the longest duration follow-up for any heterologous primary and booster Ebola vaccine schedule to our knowledge," the researchers wrote in their paper.
They added that the two-vaccine strategy "may offer advantages over reactive use of single-dose vaccine regimens" in at-risk populations, where durability of immune response is likely to be of primary importance.
Johnson & Johnson, which developed the prime vaccine, said in a statement that a total of 10 clinical studies for the Ebola vaccine regimen are currently being conducted on a parallel track across the U.S., Europe and Africa.
Meanwhile, the company said it, in partnership with Bavarian Nordic, which developed the booster vaccine, rapidly scaled up production of the vaccine regimen and now has approximately 1,8 million regimens available, with the capacity to produce several million regimens if needed.
Besides the investigational prime-boost vaccine regimen, rVSV-EBOV, an experimental Ebola vaccine developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada, has already proven highly effective against the deadly virus during a major trial in Guinea, the World Health Organization said last year.
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