Intel/FTC compulsory licensing case

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

Today every major US newspaper carried stories about the US Federal
Trade Commission's latest compulsory licensing case, this one involving
Intel, the computer chip maker.  The dispute concerns Intel's practice
of withholding technical information about its Pentium CPUs from rival
manufactuers who need the information to develop graphics and
motherboard chips, often as competitors to Intel.  Intel says that data
is its intellectual property, and it can license the data to whom it
wants, on the terms it wants. The US government was seeking mandatory
non-discriminatory licensing of the data to rival chip makers, on
reasonable terms.  Right before the case went to trial, Intel settled. 
Jamie


  Earlier a federal judge in Alabama rul


http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/03/biztech/articles/09intel.html


March 9, 1999


         Intel and the U.S. in Tentative Deal in Antitrust Case


         Chip Maker Is Said to Agree to Stop Forcing Customers 
         to Turn Over Technology 

         By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Trade Commission announced Monday that it had
reached a tentative settlement of its antitrust suit against the Intel
Corporation, theworld's largest producer of computer chips, a day before
opening arguments were set to begin in the case. 


At issue was Intel's refusal to share technical details of its
microprocessor chips with companies that build computers unless those
companies agreed to turn over their own technologies in exchange. The
Government suit asserted that such practices violated Federal antitrust
law. 


    [snip]

In the Intel case, Government lawyers accused the company of stifling
innovation by existing and potential rivals by trying to force three
other companies -- the Compaq Computer Corporation, the Digital
Equipment Corporation and the Intergraph Corporation -- to
surrendertheir patent rights. 

Intel has acknowledged that it withheld information about its chips from
the three companies. However, Intel executives said that practice was
not part of a larger effort to coerce rivals into giving up technology
but a legitimate defense in response to patent claims asserted by those
companies. 

  [snip]


See also:

http://www.essential.org/antitrust/intel/

http://lists.essential.org/random-bits/msg00026.html



-- 
James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
I can be reached at love@cptech.org, by telephone 202.387.8030,
by fax at 202.234.5176. CPT web page is http://www.cptech.org