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AMD Takes Case To Public, Japan
Kez writes "Following on from Tuesday's post on AMD filing a lawsuit against Intel in the U.S., Reuters is reporting that AMD is claiming damages against Intel K.K. in Japan, over the Japan Fair Trade Commission's recommendation that Intel has violated Japan's Antimonopoloy Act. They are seeking to claim $50million in damages in the High Court and have also filed for damages in the District Court. AMD continue to throw the punches, but will they come out on top?" At the same time, Rob writes "Computer Business Review is reporting that Advanced Micro Devices yesterday ran a
full-page advertisement in several major North American newspapers urging readers to
familiarize themselves with its 48-page
complaint against Intel Corp's alleged anti-competitiveness. By taking its case to the
people in this way, AMD arguably may pique investor interest and raise its market profile.
At the same time, these antics may however lead AMD into a precarious legal position."
There is no such thing as anti-monopoly laws. It is perfectly legal to have a monopoly.
On the bright side, at least AMD has some products to potentially advertise. That's one giant leap forward from SCO. ;-)
In the complaint filed by AMD you will see that Intel KK actually DOES ADMIT that on several occasions complaints brought under the JFTC were actually true. This is NOT SCO-like tactics. It is demonstrable fact.
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
AMD has a pretty big market. They have facilities worth billions, they have thousands of employees, and they sell a crap load of processors and other chips. They're not exactly a desperate company.
But if something like this DID happens (meaning, if Intel did strong-arm the PC makers) would you expect the competition to sit back and take it?
If you were looking for a job, and someone came in and said "if you hire this other guy, we'll give him to you for half price, but if you hire THIS guy, we'll charge you twice for any future people" you'd be pretty hurting. And you'd probably sue. I would.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Infringing on proprietary technology? They do considerable cross-licensing ,which by this news report states that "their deal since 1976" will be continuing until 2011. And what are these anti-competitive practices you speak of? Sounds like someones fishing....
I suspect that AMD's lawyers have told them that they can't be sued for libel even if they lose. You can't sue for libel or slander for statements made in court, or in court documents. If AMD just told people to go read the court documents, and didn't actually repeat the potentially libelous claims in those documents, then they can't be touched.
Look, this has nothing to do with "pricing the cost of the fab in the chip"... of course every chip manufacturer does that or they'd be out of business. Other than R&D and a little bit of ultrapure sand, most of the cost of your Pentium or Athlon is amortizing the fab.
What Intel is pricing into their chips, which AMD is not, is a crapload of operating margin, some 30%. By contrast, AMD is earning about 3% and Dell, the most fiscally secure company in the PC supply chain after Intel, about 9%. (Trailing twelve months, from finance.yahoo.com.)
From the responses to this article it seems that most of you haven't read AMD's actual complaint. It's very interesting, it's written for humans not lawyers, and anyone who cares about the computer industry would do well to read it.
Martin
For a statement to be considered libelous, they typically need to be known or suspected to be false. Given the fact that Intel has already been found guilty by one court of the behaviour they're being accused of, it is very unlikely it would pass the legal standard for libel.