Broadcom loses court bid to suspend EU antitrust request for US legal papers

BRUSSELS, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Broadcom on Monday lost its bid to suspend ‌a European Union antitrust request for U.S. ‌legal documents protected by U.S. legal professional privilege in a case ​related to VMware, which it acquired in 2023, after an EU court sided with EU regulators.

The U.S. chipmaker in May asked the Luxembourg-based General Court for ‌an interim measure ⁠against the European Commission, which acts as the EU competition enforcer, after it was ⁠hit with a demand to present documents produced outside the EU.

It said the request went against U.S. ​attorney-client privilege, ​which protects confidential communications ​between lawyers and their ‌clients. In the EU, this status covers only communications between a company and its external lawyers but not in-house lawyers.

The General Court, Europe's second-highest, rejected Broadcom's arguments.

"It is for the Commission to decide whether ‌a particular item of information ​is necessary to enable it ​to bring to ​light an infringement of the EU ‌competition rules," the judge said.

"If ​the undertaking under ​investigation was itself able to decide which documents are, in its view, relevant for the ​purposes of that ‌investigation, that would seriously undermine the Commission's ​powers of investigation," they said.

(Reporting by Foo Yun ​CheeEditing by Tomasz Janowski)