Intel Corp. and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC by its acronym in English) negotiated an agreement in an antitrust case against the company manufacturers of microprocessors, which could make obtaining compensation for damages from rival firms.
In December, the FTC filed a lawsuit against Intel for that would end what he described as decades of illegal sales tactics, which hurt his rivals and kept artificially high prices of microprocessors for computers.
This week, the FTC and Intel agreed to suspend the administrative procedures of the trial while trying to reach an agreement.In that agreement would result in a partial victory for Intel, said Robert Lande, director of the American Antitrust Institute on the University of Baltimore.
If Intel loses in court, rivals such as Nvidia Corp. could seek damages without having to demonstrate again the antitrust allegations. In contrast, these court settlements often occur without any admission of guilt.
"Once you lose a case in federal court, no longer denying the allegations," said Lande. "All that remains to be clarified is, 'harms our customers and in what amounts ?'''.
Intel Moniopolistic practice
Advanced Micro Devices Inc., a rival firm, whose lobbying regulators gave way to his allegations, said a manager at Toshiba Corp. likened to "cocaine" payments granted by Intel in exchange for not using AMD microprocessors.
In his 2005 lawsuit, AMD also said that another executive of Gateway complained that threats of retaliation from Intel to work with AMD were left as "pasta guacamole."
AMD last year reached an agreement with Intel whereby Intel AMD agreed to pay $ 1,250 million and both companies reached a five-year agreement on licensing its products.
The AP's financial editor Deborah Yao in Philadelphia contributed to this report.
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