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Intel rejects AMD's antitrust allegations

AMD's lack of success is its own fault, apparently

AMD vs Intel Intel has filed its response to AMD's antitrust allegations and, unsurprisingly, has denied them. It claimed its business practices "are both fair and lawful".

In essence, the chip giant says that while it has distributed money to its customers to help fund those company's own marketing programmes, it has never attached conditions that go beyond the limits of acceptable competitive behaviour.

“The decision whether to purchase from AMD, and in what quantity, is made by these customers without coercion or anticompetitive conditions,” Intel said.

The chip maker denied specific claims that it paid money to Gateway, Sony, NEC and others and that its executives threatened both PC vendors and channel partners with harsh measures if they purchased AMD products.

Moving onto the offensive, Intel described AMD's lawsuit as a "shield" intended to protect the smaller company from its larger rival's ability to reduce prices.

“AMD’s colorful language and fanciful claims cannot obscure AMD’s goal of shielding AMD from price competition,” Intel maintained. "AMD seeks to impede Intel's ability to lower prices and thereby to allow AMD to charge higher prices."

AMD's position in the market arises not from Intel's behaviour, the chip giant said, but from its own inability to produce sufficient processors to meet demand. It contrasted its own global network of fabs with AMD's single processor-production operation in Dresden, Germany and a separate, Flash memory plant in Austin, Texas.

Intel said it show the court that the size of AMD's share of the x86 chip market arises from the smaller company's own business decisions - not from anti-competitive behaviour on Intel's part.

"AMD's choices and behaviors with respect to core principles [production, product and price] over the period covered by the complaint provide a compelling answer to the allegations it has made in this case," Intel said.

"The facts of illegal monopoly abuse are clear and undeniable,” said Thomas McCoy, AMD's executive VP for legal affairs and the company's chief administrative officer, in a statement. “We look forward to presenting our evidence in front of the entire industry and the entire world. Let’s put the truth on the table and let the court decide.” ®

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