The State of New York has filed a lawsuit against Intel accusing the chipmaker of paying vendors billions of dollars in rebates to not use AMD chips. Xbitlabs reports that IBM, Dell and HP are among the companies that received rebates, with Dell receiving roughly $6 billion over five years.
According to lawsuit, Dell was paid rebates based on how many CPUs it bought. Xbit reports that the percentage of the rebate could fluctuate and it reached 16 percent while Dell contemplated using AMD chips. Dell allegedly received $6 billion dollars between 2002 and 2007 and the Wall Street Journal reports that these payments sometimes exceeded Dell's profits with payments for one fiscal quarter constituting 116 percent of Dell's reported net income.
The news following an EU decision to impose hefty fines upon Intel for anticompetitive practices. Intel offered similar rebates in the European market and paid vendors to delay or cancel the launch of AMD products. The European Union fined the company €3.45 billion in May of this year.
