Intel and antitrust: A brief history
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Tuesday&#39;s&#160;raid on Intel&#39;s Munich office&#160;by European Commission investigators marks the latest development in one of several antitrust cases that have dogged the world&#39;s largest chip maker for years. Here&#39;s a rundown of Intel&#39;s brushes with antitrust investigators and lawsuits around the world since 1990:1990Dec. 19: Microprocessor maker Cyrix filed an antitrust lawsuit against Intel in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas. &quot;Intel has engaged in a campaign of unlawful exclusionary practices to protect its coprocessor monopoly from competition by Cyrix,&quot; the company said in a statement.1991June 29: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) informed Intel that it was investigating the company&#39;s business practices.Aug. 20: Advanced Micro Devices brought a $2 billion antitrust lawsuit against Intel in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California, alleging that Intel &quot;engaged in unlawful acts designed to secure and maintain a monopoly.&quot;Dec. 19: U.S. District Court Judge James Ware dismissed part of AMD&#39;s antitrust lawsuit against Intel because a four-year statute of limitations had passed for some actions listed in AMD&#39;s complaint. AMD declared its intention to press forward with the lawsuit anyway.1992May 28: Processor maker Chips and Technologies sued Intel for antitrust violations in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California. The claims were a response to a Feb. 1992 patent lawsuit filed by Intel.1993Feb. 4: Chips and Technologies agreed to dismiss its 1992 antitrust claims against Intel as part of a settlement to resolve a patent dispute between the two companies.July 15: The FTC completed its investigation into Intel&#39;s business practices, saying no evidence was found to support charges of anticompetitive behavior.1994Feb. 4: Cyrix dismissed its 1990 antitrust claims against Intel as part of a patent-dispute settlement between the two companies.1995Jan. 11: AMD and Intel announced a broad legal settlement that ended several court cases between the two companies, including the 1991 antitrust lawsuit filed by AMD.1997Aug. 27: The FTC requested additional information from Intel concerning its plans to acquire Chips and Technologies, citing antitrust laws. At the time, Chips and Technologies was a major supplier of graphics chips.Sept. 25: The FTC began a second antitrust investigation into Intel&#39;s business practices. This investigation was conducted separately from the review of Intel&#39;s offer to acquire Chips and Technologies.1998Jan. 13: The FTC decided not to seek an injunction against Intel&#39;s acquisition of Chips and Technologies but announced plans to &quot;continue the investigation into the lawfulness of the acquisition.&quot;April 23: The FTC ruled that an October 1997 legal settlement between Intel and Digital Equipment that included the sale of Digital Equipment&#39;s semiconductor division, including its Alpha processor, to Intel would violate U.S. antitrust law if completed. As a result, the FTC required Digital Equipment to offer licenses for its Alpha processor to both AMD and Samsung Electronics as part of the deal.June 8: The FTC issued an antitrust ruling against Intel. The FTC found that Intel stopped providing important technical information about its products to Digital Equipment, Compaq Computer, and Intergraph after the three companies took legal action against Intel to enforce microprocessor patents they held. Intel also threatened to stop selling microprocessors to those companies, the FTC said.1999March 17: The FTC accepted a settlement with Intel over the 1998 antitrust ruling. The agreement required Intel to refrain from withholding technical information from customers involved in intellectual-property litigation with the company, but did not constitute an admission of guilt on the chip maker&#39;s part.2000Sept. 26: The FTC ended its second investigation into Intel&#39;s business practices and decided to take no further action against the company.2004Apr. 8: The Fair Trade Commission of Japan (JFTC) raided the offices of Intel&#39;s Japanese subsidiary and several Japanese computer companies as part of an investigation into Intel&#39;s business practices.2005March 8: JFTC ruled that Intel violated Japanese antitrust laws and hurt competition in the country&#39;s processor market.March 31:&#160;Intel disputed the JFTC&#39;s findings, but did not contest them and agreed to refrain from certain business practices.June 27: AMD filed an antitrust lawsuit against Intel in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. The lawsuit detailed allegations of anticompetitive behavior by Intel in the U.S., Asia and Europe.June 30:&#160;AMD sued Intel&#160;in the Tokyo High Court and the Tokyo District Court, seeking more than $50 million in damages arising from the chip maker&#39;s anticompetitive actions in Japan.July 12: European Commission investigators raided the offices of Intel and PC manufacturers in several countries as part of an antitrust investigation.2006Feb. 9: Korean Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) officials&#160;raided Intel offices in South Korea.July 17: AMD filed a complaint against Intel with Germany&#39;s Federal Cartel Office, claiming that a deal betwen Intel and retailer Media Markt blocked the sale of computers based on AMD processors at hundreds of retail outlets.Sept. 11: European Commission antitrust officials announced plans to investigate the complaint filed in Germany by AMD against Intel and Media Markt.2007July 27: The European Commission&#160;charged Intel with antitrust violations. It accused Intel of offering rebates to PC manufacturers that buy the majority of their processors from Intel, paying PC manufacturers to delay or cancel products based on AMD processors, and selling processors below cost when bidding against AMD for contracts with server makers.Sept. 12: The KFTC issued preliminary antitrust charges against Intel while continuing its investigation into the company&#39;s business practices in South Korea.2008Jan. 10: The New York State Attorney General launched an antitrust investigation of Intel. The chip maker was served with a subpoena seeking information on its pricing practices and &quot;possible attempts to exclude competitors through market domination.&quot;Feb. 12: European Commission investigators raided Intel&#39;s office in Munich. The offices of retailers Media Markt and DSG International were also raided by investigators.
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Chipmaking giant Intel Corporation believes that its future lies in dual-core chips. Speaking at last weekâs Intel Developer Forum here, Intel President and COO Paul Otellini
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One Laptop Per Child and Intel take competing approaches to manufacturing, pricing PCs--and it's not yet clear which will prevail.
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(InfoWorld) - AÂ federal judge in Delaware has dismissed portions of a class-action suit that accused Intel Corp. of violating antitrust laws. U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Farnan, in a ruling issued Wednesday, said that a U.S. court has no jurisdiction over the foreign conduct claims in a lawsuit that seeks monetary damages for U.S. consumers and businesses who purchased PCs with Intel chips. Those consumers say they were forced to pay too much because Intel used its near-monopoly position to bar computer makers from using Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) chips, thus eliminating competition and keeping prices artificially high. The case has no direct relation to the antitrust suit leveled against Intel in 2005 by AMD, but mirrors the same charges, said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. Farnan is hearing both cases, and in September made the same decision about the AMD version. The ruling means that even if the court found Intel guilty of forcing up prices, the plaintiffs could not calculate the damages they won by including PC sales by foreign vendors like Acer Inc., Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp., Mulloy said. They would have to base their claim solely on sales by U.S. vendors like Dell Inc., Gateway Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. Still, both AMD and the foreign consumers will continue pressing their cases because Farnan also ruled they could use foreign evidence to build a domestic case against Intel. "AMD and the class [action suit] would need to sue Intel in foreign jurisdictions to recover monetary damages that were incurred outside the U.S.," said AMD spokesman Michael Silverman. "From our perspective -- and I suspect the class would say the same -- the critical piece was to gain access to that foreign discovery. In both cases, the judge has allowed that access." In addition, the class-action suit concerns only the harm caused to domestic customers, said Daniel A. Small, a lawyer for the firm Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld and Toll, of Washington, D.C. who argued the plaintiffs' case. "We're pursuing very actively document discovery, both from Intel and from third parties," Small said. However, that effort hit a large hurdle on Monday, whenÂ Intel admitted it had lost many internal e-mail recordsÂ related to the AMD case, making it impossible to collect them as evidence. On Wednesday, the court gave Intel a deadline of April 10 to turn over an explanation of its e-mail preservation plan, a list of correspondence between the people responsible for following it and its plan to restore the lost data. Another challenge for the class-action suit is Intel's motion to dismiss the entire case because it says customers were never harmed by increased prices. Instead, Intel says it used its dominant market position to compete with AMD by decreasing prices, Small said. Farnan said Wednesday he would rule on that motion by the end of March. Â
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Sources say... The European Competition Commission is likely to press formal charges against chip giant Intel.â¦
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Analyst Malcolm Penn looks back over sixty years of the silicon chip industry.
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Worldwide&#160;lawsuits against Intel&#160;and&#160;four straight quarterly losses&#160;have distracted AMD during its integration of ATI Technologies, but the merger remains on track, according to industry analysts.AMD&#39;s acquisition of ATI&#160;for $5.4 billion, announced in July 2006 and completed one year ago Thursday, was viewed as a potent weapon in AMD&#39;s attempt to dent Intel&#39;s domination of the x86 processor market.The lawsuits against Intel and&#160;financial losses&#160;came at a critical time, when AMD&#39;s management needed help in integrating the ATI acquisition and making ATI employees understand AMD&#39;s culture, said Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research.AMD filed antitrust lawsuits alleging monopolistic behavior against Intel in the U.S. and Japan, and lodged complaints with the European Commission, the Korean Fair Trade Commission and Japan Fair Trade Commission.The distraction was compounded by the departure of key executives, including David Orton, former president and CEO of ATI, who resigned as executive vice president of AMD in July after only 10 months.AMD didn&#39;t have any internal problems, Peddie said, and Orton left on his own accord. &quot;A little redundancy will always occur in all organizations. It&#39;s not surprising to see people shift,&quot; Peddie said. However, outside speculation about the departure may have distracted AMD during the integration, he said.AMD also took an acquisition-related charge of $76 million, or $0.14 per share, in the third quarter of 2007 ending Sept. 29. That added to the quarterly net loss of $396 million.Despite the distractions, AMD is pulling its resources together to ensure the ATI merger goes smoothly.&quot;The merger has allowed AMD to merge its plans with ATI, which were very similar prior to the acquisition.&quot; Peddie said. Both companies wanted to amalgamate the CPU with the graphics processor, and the acquisition puts them in a position to do so.A successful merger could help AMD reach profitability in a few quarters and position it for success in the future, wrote Doug Freedman, an analyst with American Technology Research, in a research report.&quot;We believe ATI is turning the corner, which is likely material to AMD&#39;s quest for profitability,&quot; Freedman wrote.The acquisition of ATI hasn&#39;t shown an immediate benefit, but could help&#160;AMD in the long term&#160;when the company&#39;s &quot;Fusion&quot; project comes to fruition, Peddie said. Fusion is the code name for is AMD&#39;s next-generation processor design that is expected to combine high-performance graphics and CPU processing on a single die. The project was announced when the merger was completed. AMD is not prepared to talk about Fusion yet, but it is intended to bring the cost of PCs down and reduce power consumption, Peddie said.AMD also announced the &quot;Spider&quot; platform, which will include AMD&#39;s upcoming Phenom chips and high-end graphics processors to provide users with the &quot;ultimate visual experience&quot; in computing, said Dirk Meyer, AMD&#39;s president and chief operating officer, on the company&#39;s third-quarter earnings call last week.With all the attention focused on Phenom and Spider, ATI&#39;s involvement in other businesses gets sidetracked, said Phil Hester, senior vice president and chief technology officer for AMD. AMD&#39;s ATI unit is a big player in supplying graphics to consumer electronics, set-top boxes and gaming consoles, Hester said. ATI supplies graphics processing units (GPUs) for Microsoft&#39;s Xbox 360 and Nintendo&#39;s Wii consoles, Hester said.&quot;Discrete GPUs will continue to be a good business for us,&quot; Hester said. AMD&#39;s graphics segment revenue grew 29 percent to $252 million sequentially, driven by the success of the ATI Radeon HD 2000 series of graphics processors.However, ATI&#39;s market share in the discrete graphics market has been hit by manufacturing problems and bad timing in bringing chips to market, Peddie said. Competitors such as Nvidia and Silicon Integrated Systems stepped up by shipping graphics chips on a timely basis, taking market share away from ATI.&quot;Market share could begin to swing back towards ATI even if it introduced simply comparable products to Nvidia in the near-term,&quot; wrote Doug Freedman in a research report. ATI&#39;s RV670 graphics card is competitive in the mainstream market with current Nvidia products, Freedman wrote.But AMD still has work to do to make the merger a success. Its biggest threat remains Intel, which maintains a stranglehold on the chip market.&quot;AMD must rebuild its brand value in the enthusiast market in order to garner better mainstream adoption and consumer recognition,&quot; Freedman wrote.
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Key dates in the European Union's antitrust proceedings against Microsoft Corp.:
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Intel Corp., the world's largest semiconductor company, was charged with violating South Korean antitrust laws, the company and regulators said Tuesday.
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No hard feelings. Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) has hired away hundreds of engineers from Hewlett-Packard (nyse: HPQ - news - people ). However, it is unlikely to cause friction between the chipmaker
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The South Korean business daily Maeil has confirmed that the country's Fair Trade Commission has not only concluded its antitrust investigation against Intel, but has filed a statement of objections against the CPU maker. This after some US press sources had taken the headline of Korea's story, "Korea Closes Intel Investigation," too literally.
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Sarebbero stati gonfiati i rimborsi conferiti da Intel
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Intel looks set to find itself in the midst of an industry battle over how the power and complexity of computers should be combined with the convenience and simplicity of consumer electronics &#8212; and the company couldn&#8217;t be happier.
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The scuttling of the chip raises the risk that Intel might fall behind AMD in the race to create the fastest processors. Some saw the move as desperate attempt to deal with the fact that
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European Union antitrust regulators raided Intel Corp. offices and computer retailers on Tuesday seeking evidence they may have broken rules to ensure competition in the market for computer chips, the European Commission and Intel said.
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Delaware judge limits scope of anti-trust case Intel's lawyers will have their laptops searched at one less airport, after a US district judge limited the scope of AMD's antitrust action against the company.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - South Korean antitrust regulators have issued preliminary allegations against IntelÂ forÂ allegedly undermining competition in its PC microprocessor market, but formal charges won't be made for at least another month. The Korean Fair Trade Commission (FTC) sent a "statement of objection" to Intel, which contained preliminary allegations, said Nick Jacobs, an Intel spokesman in Singapore. The document is not a final decision, nor has it been upheld by a court. "It does not itself amount to a finding that there has been a violation of law," he said. "As such, any conclusions about our business practices are at best premature." A senior deputy director at South Korea's FTC said the investigation against Intel remains ongoing. The next step for the world's largest chip maker is to respond to the letter of objection, after which the FTC will rule on the case. South Korea could become the third place to rule on an Intel antitrust case. In 2005, Japan's Fair Trade Commission helped kick off the recent spate ofÂ investigations against IntelÂ by ruling that the company's Japan unit stifled competition by offering rebates to Japanese PC makers in return for agreements to limit purchases of or not buy rival x86 microprocessors. Earlier this year, the European Commission ruled similarly,Â alleging that Intel violated EU antitrust lawsÂ by giving rebates to customers that enabled the company to win sales from rival Advanced Micro Devices. AMD filed an antitrust suit against IntelÂ in June, 2005 at the U.S. District Court in Delaware, shortly after Japan's FTC revealed its allegations against the company. "Following formal action in Japan and Europe, global scrutiny is increasingly focused on Intel's harm to competition and consumers alike. Governments around the world must enforce antitrust laws to bring fair and open competition that will benefit computer manufacturers and buyers everywhere," said Tom McCoy, AMD's executive vice president, legal affairs and chief administrative officer, in an e-mail. (Ben Ames in Boston contributed to this report.)