Nintendo sees price rigging fine reduced

A massive EU fine against Nintendo for illegally rigging the market for its consoles and games was slashed by nearly £30m (€33.4m) on appeal today.

A massive EU fine against Nintendo for illegally rigging the market for its consoles and games was slashed by £27m (€30.1m) on appeal today.

EU judges said the parent company should benefit from the same discount on its penalty as that already granted to John Menzies, Nintendo's UK distributors.

The ruling reduces the original fine of £134m (€149.5m) imposed by the European Commission in 2002 to £107m (€119.4m).

The Japanese game maker and seven of its distributors were given fines totalling just more than £150m (€167.4m) by the Commission for breaching EU fair competition rules by trying to keep prices artificially high in some countries during the 1990s.

The vast proportion of the total was against the parent company - one of the biggest fines meted out by the EU's powerful fair competition authority to reflect what the Commission said was Nintendo's role as "the driving force behind the illicit behaviour".

However, Nintendo appealed to the EU's Court of First Instance in Luxembourg, where judges today ruled that the Commission should have taken account of Nintendo's level of co-operation in the price-rigging inquiry.

EU competition rules allow for reductions or even the waiving of penalties against companies facing fines if they co-operate "effectively" with the Commission.

John Menzies's co-operation had been rewarded at the time with a percentage reduction in its fine for involvement in the price-rigging, said today's judgment, adding: "Pursuant to the principle of equal treatment, since Nintendo produced the relevant documents at the same stage of the procedure, and its co-operation must be regarded as comparable (to that of John Menzies), it must benefit from the same level of reduction of fine."