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NY Investigates Intel

By Manfred Gabriel

The New York Times reports that NY AG Cuomo has issued a subpoena against Intel. The allegations are that Intel is monopolizing the market for x86 chips—not novel, perhaps, but always good for antitrust news. 

?Protecting fair and open competition in the microprocessor market is critical to New York, the United States, and the world,? Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. ?Monopolistic practices are a serious concern particularly for New Yorkers who are navigating an information-intensive economy.? 

The NY Times goes on to describe AMD’s efforts to use antitrust law to defend itself from what it sees as Intel’s monopolization:

Advanced Micro Devices has waged what is in essence a global antitrust campaign against Intel. A.M.D. has already filed civil lawsuits or complaints against Intel in Europe, Japan and South Korea; in 2005, it filed a civil suit against Intel in federal district court in Delaware, a case that is still going on and has already produced hundreds of millions of pages of documents. All told, the legal battle between A.M.D. and Intel is one of the largest antitrust matters pending before American and foreign regulators.   

A spokesperson for Intel is quoted as saying: ?We believe our business practices are lawful. … We also believe that the microprocessor market is a competitive market, and is behaving just as one would expect a competitive market to behave.?That is an interesting thing to say because I don’t believe anyone disputes that the microprocessor market is a 90-10 duopoly. Which doesn’t imply anticompetitive conduct on the part of Intel, of course, but it does make me wonder to what extent such a duopoly would be expected to behave like a “competitive market.” Here is the NY AG’s press release. 

Full post as published by Antitrust Review on January 10, 2008 (boomark / email).