Intel Settles NY Antitrust Case

clustermonkey writes "Intel Corporation and the New York Attorney General have agreed to terminate the lawsuit alleging violation of U.S. and state antitrust laws that was filed by the New York Attorney General in November 2009. Intel did not have to admit any violation of law (if there ever was any) nor did it have to admit or deny that the allegations in the complaint are true. Most importantly, the settlement does not require any changes to how the company does business. The settlement includes a $6.5 million payment that is "intended only to cover some of the costs incurred by the New York Attorney General in the litigation." Here's the full settlement, and Intel's official press release."

It's a Sweetheart Deal, Not Extortion

[Anonymous Coward]

In the end, Intel gets double-jeopardy protection for the bargin-bin price of funding the NY AG office for a couple years. It's like bribery, but way more efficient.

Re:Legal Extortion?

[jellomizer]

Not really upstate NY near Saratoga has a Global Foundry (AMD) chip facility that is expected to revitalize the area around NY capital (Albany). It is just as likely that New York State did the lawsuit just to get rid of the competition.

Re:Legal Extortion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Complaining that the Intel compiler optimizes instructions differently/better for Intel CPUs and not for other vendors is not an anti-trust matter. It is akin to saying MSFT is violating anti-trust because they "rig" their OS to run apps built using .Net extensions "better" (faster/prettier/etc) than apps cross-compiled using Qt. Yes, they are in the business of writing tools that support their business model -- that is not anti-trust.

If Intel was crossing the line into predatory pricing, then that may qualify as anti-trust, but you have to prove they crossed the line. Predatory pricing is "the practice of dropping prices of a product so much that in order one's smaller competitors cannot cover their costs and fall out of business." I do not believe Intel effectively dropped the prices of P4 (even including rebates) far enough that it was below a level where AMD could not compete to cover the costs of their business. Even if we accept your premise that there were financial quarters in which Dell only turned profit due to such rebates, this is not predatory. You could possibly try to argue that such a "deal" is collusion, but that is still a jump and a leap away from anything anti-trust.