Intel Vs. AMD: I Know You Are But What Am I?
Which is not to understate the growing seriousness of the dispute between the two leading microprocessor manufacturers, particularly with less than a year remaining before Intel and AMD are scheduled to negotiate a renewal of their current 10-year agreement. Given the integration of key technologies owned by one or the other company in both parties' core products, it's difficult to see how either could proceed commercially without renewing that deal.
That said, there's dark comedy to be found in this ongoing game of chicken, ostensibly being played out over Intel's claim that the newly formed Globalfoundries is not, as AMD says, a true subsidiary of AMD and thus not eligible for rights and licenses held by AMD under the cross-license deal.
The AMD response to Intel's steps toward terminating the smaller company's rights and licenses under the agreement while retaining its own has been, essentially, "No, we're going to terminate their rights and licenses while retaining our own." Of course, that's actually what happens to a defaulting party that does not correct a material breach within 60 days of receiving a written complaint from the other, as per Clause 6.2.(a) of the agreement -- the offender loses its rights and licenses while the party not in default gets to keep its own.
Meanwhile, Intel, which AMD regularly accuses of bad motives for keeping certain evidence under seal in its ongoing antitrust proceedings, has hinted strongly that AMD is itself afraid to make public the portions of the cross-license agreement that allegedly prove Intel is the injured party in this dispute.
To paraphrase the Intel legal team: "Neener, neener!"
And on it goes. Where it stops, nobody knows. Now AMD has replied in the latest go-round that it would be perfectly willing to make the cross-license material public -- but only if Intel lifts the lid on the antitrust stuff it's keeping under seal. The smaller company actually told us it would be fine with removing the confidential treatment from the entire agreement, which currently redacts a whole lot more than just part of the definition of a subsidiary.
"AMD would be happy to make the entire agreement public if Intel drops its insistence on secrecy concerning its exclusionary business practices under the guise of confidentiality it has imposed on evidence in the U.S. civil antitrust case. There is no commercial reason to have those documents under seal; it is simply a means for Intel to try to conceal its illegal behavior," AMD spokesman Michael Silverman wrote to us in response to an e-mail query.
In short, everything bounces off me and sticks to you. Or to serve up an even more unvarnished interpretation of Silverman's offer -- AMD is perfectly willing to jump off the 50th floor of the Empire State Building, just so long as Intel jumps off the 75th floor first.
But which company is actually correct here? Until and unless the agreement is made public, as semiconductor industry analyst Roger Kay of Endpoint Technology Associates put it to us Monday, "We can't know."
So true. And the older we get, the more we find that phrase applies, regardless of the question.
There is one thing AMD and Intel agree on, however. This dispute is proceeding according to the process set forth in the cross-license agreement, both Intel legal spokesman Chuck Mulloy and Silverman have independently confirmed. Senior management of both companies have met and now a written demand for a formal dispute resolution has been sent by Intel to AMD.
The next step, the one where Intel and AMD find themselves now, is for the parties to spend a day with an impartial mediator to try to work this thing out without going to court. If the kinks aren't worked out over the month that follows that meeting, either party can begin litigation.
So jokes aside, this is getting pretty serious.