New York blasts Intel in an antitrust suit

Ugly details revealed, it just keeps getting worse

IT LOOKS LIKE the brown stuff has hit the rotating blades in the ongoing Intel vs AMD antitrust lawsuits. New York’s Attorney General Andrew Cuomo just filed suit against Intel for all sorts of nasty things.

You can read summaries of it on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal websites. The lawsuit is the result of a long investigation, and the complaint is filled with all sorts of juicy quotes.

The first sentence of the first paragraph reads, “Intel has engaged in a systematic worldwide campaign of illegal, exclusionary conduct to maintain its monopoly power and prices in the market for x86 microprocessors, the ‘brains’ of Personal Computers (‘PCs’).” These are not minced words, and it goes way downhill, fast, for Intel, from there. “But Intel has instead used threats and coercion, bribing and bullying to preserve its market dominance,” it reads.

The New York lawsuit and the details exposed in it back up what we have been hearing for years, especially things like ECAP that were mentioned over and over when talking to OEMs over the years. In short, the suit lays Intel’s behavior out, in detail, and it is very ugly.

As a response, Intel is denying everything, saying that consumers have benefited from lower prices. AMD execs could not immediately be reached for comment, but one theory is that a champagne cork hit the PBX in Building 1 of the company’s campus in the Lone Star State.

As we go through the document, we will post updates in the forum and in followup articles as appropriate. This lawsuit spreads enough dirt out for public display to plant a silicon forest in northern New York State in.S|A

Update: The PDF is posted in this thread on our forums. Discuss.

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Charlie Demerjian

Roving engine of chaos and snide remarks at SemiAccurate
Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also available through Guidepoint and Mosaic. FullyAccurate