의결서를 통해 본 로열티 리베이트에 관한 소논제들: Intel사례를 중심으로

Korea Fair Trade Commission(KFTC) imposed corrective orders and surcharge on Intel for excluding competitors by providing rebates to local PC makers conditioned upon not buying AMD’s CPUs or suspending their CPU purchase from AMD in 2008. It is considered to be the first loyalty rebate case detected by KFTC. Being the first loyalty rebate case, the Intel case has raised some unanswered issues on deciding the anti-competitive effects of loyalty rebates. Those issues are related to the exclusion of efficient competitor, the existence of buyer’s bargaining power, the role of economic analysis, the market definition,and the lack of guideline for deciding anti-competitiveness of loyalty rebates. The actual exclusion of efficient competitors would be necessary for identifying an abuse of dominance, but in the Intel case, the existence of efficient competitor is not explored. In addition, even though the existence of buyer’s bargaining power could weaken Intel’s market power, the existence of buyer’s bargaining power is not considered in the decision. In addition, the geographical market definition is also debatable. Finally, it is unfortunate that the economic analysis results were not accepted in decision, but it cannot be emphasized too much that the economic analysis should play an important role in assessing the anti-competitive effects of loyalty rebates in the future.