EU Officials Raid Intel Offices

Eukariote writes "As part of the ongoing antitrust investigations, EU officials have raided Intel offices as well as offices of a number of IT firms manufacturing or selling computers. This follows the recent ruling by Japan's Fair Trade Commission declaring Intel's exclusionary practices illegal as well as the lawsuit filed by AMD."

Comments

More Info

[starrsoft]

Here's my story submission, which provides some more info, that didn't make the cut:

starrsoft writes, "Apparently AMD's lawsuit isn't just just a PR stunt, as some have suggested. In related news to today's earlier story about AMD's claims concerning Intel compilers discriminating against AMD, EU regulators raided several of Intel's European offices regarding 'an ongoing competition case.' From the article: 'European antitrust regulators raided Intel Corp. offices Tuesday, two weeks after rival U.S. chip-maker Advanced Micro Devices filed a lawsuit claiming Intel used its market dominance to bully computer makers away from using AMD chips... For more than four years, the EU has been investigating claims that Intel used unfair business practices to persuade clients to buy its microprocessors to the exclusion of rivals' chips.In March, the bloc said it was continuing its probe after a Japanese investigation found that Intel had violated antitrust rules there. The EU cooperated with the Japanese regulators.'

Re:More Info

[Vodak]

I believe that since Intel has been marketing many different processor types and technologies from Pentium 4, to Hyper Threading, to Centrino the marketing of "Intel Inside" has lost alot of it's luster.

As such it is my belief that the current way general consumers look at processors are simply price driven and to hell with preformance.. be it AMD, Intel, or anyone else for that matter.

We are in the world of 299 PCs... The new game systems will cost more then a end user PC platform.

Re:What kind

[ohyedoggies]

Someone mod parent redundant.

An old rumor

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in '98, a friend of mine was an intern for
a summer at Intel. He described a curious
practice. They would evidently hold practice
raids on employees. The legal staff would ask
the employee to drop what they were working on,
and step outside. The legal staff would rifle
through the office, looking for anything that
would help an antitrust suit. (E.g., even
memos that said "We dominate the chip fab
market...") They would then confiscate and
edit the documents that looked like they would
help an opponent in a suit. (E.g., rewrite to
"We are competitive in the chip fag market...")

So, I think the EU Intel offices are well
prepared for this raid.

Re:I can't believe Americans are supporting this

[Guppy06]

"a company based mainly in the United States and employs our people."

Posting from Indonesia, are we?

Raid?

[Sebastopol]

A bit overzealous term.

They walked in, asked for documents they had called about. Intel's lawyers were there waiting because they had been notified, and handed over everything they asked for.

So it wasn't a swat team breaking down doors catching barret with has pants down in front of a goat while grove was cramming confidential documents into his mouth.