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."

Legal Extortion?

[jhoegl]

I don't understand. From the Summary it looks a lot like Legal extortion in that Intel paid to have this go away.

Re:New York Capitulated !!

[Sarten-X]

6.5 million dollars ? What's that, again?

Pocket change for Intel.

With the prosecutors having a case that's pretty much botched anyway, it's a way of saying "no hard feelings, but do fuck off". The AG folks who worked on this can spin the payment to look like they didn't completely screw up, and Intel doesn't admit to any wrongdoing.

It's as close to a win-win situation as any lawsuit will reach.

Re:Legal Extortion?

[Jane Q. Public]

That's the problem with these "regulations" these days. Who benefited?

First, the corporations get fined a lot less than they cost other people... which isn't the way that's supposed to work. They're supposed to be fined enough to prevent them from doing it again. In general, that means MORE than whatever they cost other people.
Second... they don't have to admit any wrongdoing. What's the point then?
Third, who gets the money? The people Intel harmed? Hell, no! The government gets the money.
It's all a crock of sh*t. This needs to change. I mean it really, really needs to change.

Re:Unknown Entity

[Richard_at_work]

Because there is no such thing as a "standard x86 extension listing" - Intel test the optimisations for all CPUs they target, so do you expect Intel to have to also test competitors chips or do you expect them to just hope everything works fine on an Athlon as well? No, the correct thing to do is assume nothing works.

AMD can always release their own compiler...