Intel Pulls Out $1.25B to Settle All AMD Problems
Intel digs deep into its pocket once again to settle competition with AMD.
In what could be one of the closing chapters in a long-lasting saga, Intel Corporation and Advanced Micro Devices today announced a comprehensive agreement to end all outstanding legal disputes between the companies, including antitrust litigation and patent cross license disputes.
In a joint statement, the two companies commented, "While the relationship between the two companies has been difficult in the past, this agreement ends the legal disputes and enables the companies to focus all of our efforts on product innovation and development."
Under terms of the agreement:
- AMD and Intel obtain patent rights from a new 5-year cross license agreement
- Intel and AMD will give up any claims of breach from the previous license agreement
- Intel will pay AMD $1.25 billion.
- Intel agrees to abide by a set of business practice provisions.
As a result, AMD will drop all pending litigation including the case in U.S. District Court in Delaware and two cases pending in Japan. AMD will also withdraw all of its regulatory complaints worldwide. The agreement will be made public in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Let it snow let it snow.
How much of the 1.25b is left after AMD has to pay their lawyers?
Let it snow let it snow.
How much of the 1.25b is left after AMD has to pay their lawyers?
-Homer (except he said Beer)
So does this mean that Intel is off the hook for all the anti-competitive crap they've been getting in trouble with over the last year or so... If so, $1.25 billion sounds on the light side... didn't they give Dell $6 billion over a period of 5 years?
And I agree clemaaron. Intel paid dell $6-billion to not sell AMD chips, but now AMD gets only $1.25 billion as an "oops, our bad" apology? Maybe the figure was reduced because AMD admitted some fault of their own.
Don't know. Either way, we have 5 years until more dirt turns up on Intel and they go into another "everything belongs to us" tirade against their competitors.
In the meantime, I'm going to wait and see how much they end up paying Nvidia to settle those claims.
Probably not ALL of them, but enough that, for example, Intel can't sue AMD for using x86 and AMD can't sue Intel for using x86-64.
no details yet in the cross-license agreement, but hopefully it's a nice smooth transition so BOTH companies can get back to work and actually compete fairly.