2nd UPDATE: EU Court Reduces Nintendo Antitrust Fine
30 4월 2009 - 7:27PM
Dow Jones News
A European court Thursday lowered a fine levied against Japanese
video game maker Nintendo Co Ltd. (7974.OK) for preventing parallel
trade in its computer gaming consoles and game cartridges.
The fine, imposed by the European Commission in 2002, was
reduced to EUR119 million from EUR149 million.
The total fine for Nintendo and its distributors was EUR167.8
million, but only three companies, Nintendo, Belgium's CD-Contact
Data GmbH and Japan's Itochu Corp. (8001.TO), appealed their
fines.
Parallel trade is the practice of trading goods from lower-cost
countries into companies which already have a higher-priced supply
from the manufacturer.
The commission, Europe's antitrust agency, fined Nintendo for
anticompetitive behavior, along with seven of its European
distributors, after it found they had taken part in an agreement
aimed at keeping lower-priced U.K. products from being sold
elsewhere in the European Union between 1991 and 1998.
In 1996, for example, Nintendo products were up to 65% cheaper
in the U.K. than in the Netherlands or Germany.
The seven distributors are U.K.-based John Menzies PLC
(MNZS.LN); Portugal's Concentra - Produtos para criancas S.A.
(Portugal); Italy's Linea GIG. SpA.; Sweden's Bergsala AB; Itochu
Hellas, the Greek subsidiary of the Itochu, Greece's Nortec A.E.
and CD-Contact.
Nintendo faced the biggest fine for its role in setting up and
keeping the arrangement going, even when it knew the commission was
investigating.
The Court of First Instance ruled Nintendo should gain the same
level of reduction as John Menzies did for cooperating as it
produced documents at the same stage of the procedure.
The CFI also reduced CD-Contact's fine to EUR500,000 from EUR1
million but upheld Itochu's fine at EUR4.5 million.
Nintendo welcomed the decision saying "the European Commission
breached its own guidelines when setting the fine." The company had
approached the commission in "good faith, had supplied all
available documentation," the company said in an emailed
statement.
Nintendo will now study the ruling in detail and "reserves the
right to take its appeal against the quantum of this fine to the
European Court of Justice."
-By Mike Gordon, Dow Jones Newswires; +352 691 180 766;
mgordon.dowjones@gmail.com
(Peppi Kiviniemi contributed to this item.)