March 17, 2009
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Late yesterday, Intel said it is threatening AMD to kill a cross-licensing agreement signed between the two
companies back in 2001.
In an SEC filing, AMD said it had received some correspondence from Intel relating to the firm's 2001 Patent
Cross Licensing Agreement, which "alleges that the Company has committed a material breach of the Cross License
through the creation of the Company's Global Foundries joint venture and purports to terminate the Company's rights
and licenses under the Cross License in sixty days if the alleged breach has not been corrected".
Global Foundries is what used to be AMD's chip making business, which the company divested itself recently.
AMD didn't detail the nature of the breach, which it in any case insists it hasn't actually made. But it might
be a fair guess that Intel is keen to ensure that none of its intellectual property is hawked to other companies
via Global Foundries.
Intel said it was happy to license its technology, "but we do not believe AMD can unilaterally extend Intel's
rights to a 3rd party without Intel's consent," an Intel spokesperson said.
Presumably, Intel would prefer to do any such intellectual property prolifertion itself. An Intel spokesman said
in a statement "Intel believes that the formation of Global Foundries is not a subsidiary under the terms of the
agreement and is therefore not licensed under a 2001 patent cross license agreement and that AMD violated the agreement.
AMD will instead opt to keep the legal mess going, maintaining "that Intel's purported attempt to terminate the
Company's rights and licenses under the Cross License itself constitutes a material breach of the Cross License by
Intel which gives the Company the right to terminate Intel's rights and licenses under the Cross License Agreement
while retaining the Company's rights and licenses under the Cross License Agreement".
Intel and AMD spent most of the 1990s suing each other after AMD used a co-processor agreement with Intel to leap
full scale into the x86 processor market.
For most of this decade, the two have maintained what could be termed 'reasonably friendly relations'.
The two company's legal departments are no strangers to each other. Apart from the latest patent dispute, the
two firms have long running anti-trust disputes, most prominently in Europe and Asia.
It is in Intel's best interest that AMD continues to provide some competition in the x86 market. And it is this
interest in diverting the eyes of antitrust investigators that will probably mean the latest issue will be resolved.
It will be interesting to see how this all pans out in the next couple of months, as competition in this segment
intensifies even more.
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Source: Intel.
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