AMD Subpoenas to Stop Document Destruction

cyberfunk2 writes "It appears that a court has granted AMD a "no-shred" request with respect to documents related to its' charges of Intel anticompetitive behavior. 9 of the 32 companies subpoenaed so far have said they will adhere to the order. The 9 are Acer, Gateway, Lenovo, NEC, Rackable Systems, Sony, Sun, Tech Data and Circuit City. Others have promised to respond soon."

Comments

How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[DanielMarkham]

The nature of the complaint sounds awful, and AMD certainly has a very competitive product that Intel is trying to quash. I can't help but wonder, though, at how difficult it is going to be to prove the charges AMD makes, and even if they are proved, by the time years have passed and the judgement is made, the market will be way down the road. Look at the Microsoft browser case: while there was relief granted, did it really make a difference by the time it was given?
In addition, the sheer volume of paperwork requested (38 companies) indicates that this is going to be huge and take time to prosecute. While that's great for the lawyers, I'm not so sure it serves the interests of their client. Aside from a insignificant (relatively speaking) award and the lawyers getting paid, I can't remember one tech company suing another and actually coming out on top of the market years later. Perhaps they are doing this for deterrence purposes? ie, to keep Intel from continuing its practices during the trial?

Easy For You to Say

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[cybersaga]

Aside from a insignificant (relatively speaking) award and the lawyers getting paid, I can't remember one tech company suing another and actually coming out on top of the market years later. Perhaps they are doing this for deterrence purposes? ie, to keep Intel from continuing its practices during the trial?

Remember that AMD's sales are not declining because of Intel, as Netscape usage shrunk because of IE. AMD has been growing, but has seemed to hit a cap, or a block in the road that they can't pass because of Intel's actions. So during this trial, they won't be losing or dying, but they'll simply be at a stand-still. Once Intel's actions are eliminated, AMD will be free to continue growing.

Re:How Much Paperwork Can a Lawyer Process?

[I_Want_This_ID]

Yes, AMD has a better product in my own opinion than Intel.

Open up the advertising for Best Buy or Circuit City or any other retailer that sells computers. How many of the systems do you see containing AMD chips versus Intel chips? Why is it for every AMD computer I see, I see 10 or 20 Intel computers?

More people ARE buying AMD chips, but AMD is arguing that even MORE people would buy them if Intel wasn't using anti-competetive practices against them.

As a side note: You and your friends are a great and important segment for AMD, yet they really want to be mainstream and they can't quite seem to leap that hurdle

'scuse my ignorance

[Linker3000]

How can you tell whether an organisation is shredding or not if they do it covertly? After all, if you have something to hide why are you going to worry about someone telling you to stop if you think you can cover your tracks - or is this like the infamous "have you stopped beating your wife?" question?

Re:'scuse my ignorance

[mrscorpio]

If they ask for "incriminating document #23521 from 5/6/03" and they don't have it, but have "unincriminating documents #23520 from 5/5/03 and #23522 from 5/7/03", they're fucked and the responsible parties (and their boss, and their boss's boss) will go to jail.

The point in a document retention policy is:

1. Having a written policy
2. It needs to make sense (e.g. that deleting all e-mail after 60 days one in another post sounds a little shady)
3. It needs to be followed consistently (e.g., these documents are kept for this long and then shredded within this amount of time. Any significant deviation from this is bad)

Good news for AMD

[cybersaga]

Even without Toshiba, or the other 22 comapanies that have not responded or made a decision yet, AMD still has some big guns on their side.

Those 9 companies are big names and could win the case for them if indeed they have the evidence AMD is hoping for.

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[Slack3r78]

Not only that, but the majority of AMD's outsourced jobs don't go to places like India, but rather to Germany, another first-world nation to workers that are making wages similar to, if not better than, those that their American counterparts. Sure, I'd prefer that money stayed at home, but in all fairness, I can't lump sending that money to another country where workers are generally treated a little bit better than the US as far as benefits go in the same category as sending programming jobs to India to save money. Lou Dobbs is a fairly smart guy, but he's got a huge nationalist streak, and it shows in reports like this.

Re:Check out AMD's misdeed

[jcr]

Outsourcing isn't a misdeed.

AMD has no duty whatsoever to employ anyone in the first place, and they're perfectly entitled to have work done overseas if it makes financial sense to do so.

-jcr

Re:So difficult to do business anymore.

[Austerity Empowers]

I'd say that is the case here and we are not bothered by AMD's lawsuit. Our managers have informed us of the case and gave the coordinates of our lawyer responsible for it. That's pretty much it, life is normal.

I can't imagine anyone being sidetracked for a document preservation project. To me this case is good for those 32 companies (unless one is Intel), it will ensure that we continue to get the best prices on our product without being forced into vendor lock in. If only we could find a way to put Microsoft in its place (practically).

Dell?

[FatherOfONe]

Why did they not bother with Dell?

Is seems obvious to me that Dell is getting something for not using AMD chips. A company that was so open about wanting to build a freaking Macintosh X86 computer would not EVER use an AMD chip?

So on one hand they will build a computer, that "may" be radically different than any other they have produced, for say 2% of the market, and of that market a large percentage would still only buy from Apple. But they won't use AMD for ANY systems??? I am willing to bet that AMD would make up far more than the fraction of a percentage of their sales...