Intel moves to dismiss elements of AMD case

AS ANTICIPATED, chip giant Intel filed a motion in a Delaware court to dismiss a raft of AMD's allegations it had engaged in antitrust action.

Its grounds were lack of subject matter jurisdiction and standing. Stripped of its legalese, this means Intel claims prior judgements which back up its case - basically that because AMD makes its chips in Germany, a case can't be tried in Delaware or Anyware in the United States for that matter.

The motion to dismiss doesn't affect AMD's claims alleging lost import sales of AMD's German manufactured chips into the US, or CPUs the firm made before starting manufacturing them at its Dresden fab.

Chipzilla claims that AMD's action is outside the scope of the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act of 1982. While Intel concedes that AMD can seek relief from the alleged anticompetitive effects of Intel's conduct on domestic US commerce, "it may not pursue claims of injury arising out of conduct in foreign commerce that directly causes only foreign effects".

It wants the judge to dismiss all claims based on AMD's "German made microprocessors" to foreign customers, including Sony, Toshiba, NEC, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Fujitsu Siemens, NEC, unnamed European OEMs, Lenovo, Solectron, MSI, Ingram Micro in China, RIC in Germany, Paradigit and Quote Component in the Netherlands, Supercom in Canada, Media Markt, Aldi, DSG, Toys'r'Us, Time Computer, Conforma and Boulanger.

These related to paragraphs 40-44, 54, 74, 55, 56, 65, 75, 81, 83, 86, 89, 93, 94, 100, and 101 of AMD's original filing.

It wants the court to strike out paragraph 106 of AMD's original suit which involved German firm Vobis "hanging a banner advertising AMD products at the CeBIT trade show in Hanover".

Intel produced reams of supporting documents to persuade the judge to make this order. Insiders suggest Intel will base this motion to dismiss on a previous case, details of which can be found here, and which went right to the Supreme Court. µ

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