

Intel, AMD to Bury Antitrust Hatchet; Intel to Pay $1.25b - asnyder
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/11/12/intel-amd-to-bury-antitrust-hatchet-intel-to-pay-125b/

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sadiq
Great for the duopoly.

Maybe not so great for companies getting locked out of the market (like
Nvidia).

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sireat
Also Via is probably left out in the cold.

Good news for AMD stockholders(stock is already up 20%+).

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wmf
VIA/Centaur settled a patent lawsuit with Intel a few years ago and got a
10-year license.

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rbanffy
Let's hope more and more free and open-source software make x86 compatibility
a need of the past.

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adamc
Avoiding spending more money on litigation has to be a win for everyone,
including the customers of these companies.

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rbanffy
But what about the chi^H^H^Hlawyers?

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Perceval
I wonder how comparable this agreement will be to the one signed between
Microsoft and Apple that ended their legal battles over "look and feel." They
signed patent cross-licensing agreements about five years later.

But the agreement came when Apple had all but lost the PC market to Microsoft
--the agreement was Apple's way of capitulating and Microsoft allowing Apple
to save face.

What does this mean for the Intel monopoly position in the market?

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Tuna-Fish
Right now, Intel can easily maintain their position on products alone -- the
only place AMD can compete is on the low end, and even there Intel can cut
prices to where AMD just can't compete if Intel feels like it.

All the anticompetitive stuff happened when AMD genuinely had the better
product, and until that happens again, I doubt anything will happen to Intel's
position.

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Tamerlin
Let's just hope that it DOES happen again!

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c00p3r
That money will be redirected to investors. Btw, AMD holds a debt of
comparable size.

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ars
Their debt is about $3.7 billion [http://www.forbes.com/2007/05/14/amd-debt-
spansion-markets-e...](http://www.forbes.com/2007/05/14/amd-debt-spansion-
markets-equity-cx_af_0514markets16.html), so this only partially helps.

