Monday, March 16th 2009
Intel Notifies AMD of Cross-License Breach
Intel Corporation today disclosed that the company has notified Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) that it believes AMD has breached a 2001 patent cross-license agreement with Intel. Intel believes that Global Foundries is not a subsidiary under terms of the agreement and is therefore not licensed under the 2001 patent cross-license agreement. Intel also said the structure of the deal between AMD and ATIC breaches a confidential portion of that agreement. Intel has asked AMD to make the relevant portion of the agreement public, but so far AMD has declined to do so. AMD's breach could result in the loss of licenses and rights granted to AMD by Intel under the agreement.
"Intellectual property is a cornerstone of Intel's technology leadership and for more than 30 years, the company has believed in the strategic importance of licensing intellectual property in exchange for fair value. However AMD cannot unilaterally extend Intel's licensing rights to a third party without Intel's consent," said Bruce Sewell, senior vice president and general counsel for Intel. We have attempted to address our concerns with AMD without success since October. We are willing to find a resolution but at the same time we have an obligation to our stockholders to protect the billions of dollars we've invested in intellectual property."
Under terms of the license agreement the notification to AMD means the parties will attempt to resolve the dispute through mediation. In response to the notification AMD claimed Intel breached the agreement by notifying AMD of its breach. Intel believes that position is inconsistent with the dispute resolution process outlined in the original agreement.
Source:
Intel
"Intellectual property is a cornerstone of Intel's technology leadership and for more than 30 years, the company has believed in the strategic importance of licensing intellectual property in exchange for fair value. However AMD cannot unilaterally extend Intel's licensing rights to a third party without Intel's consent," said Bruce Sewell, senior vice president and general counsel for Intel. We have attempted to address our concerns with AMD without success since October. We are willing to find a resolution but at the same time we have an obligation to our stockholders to protect the billions of dollars we've invested in intellectual property."
Under terms of the license agreement the notification to AMD means the parties will attempt to resolve the dispute through mediation. In response to the notification AMD claimed Intel breached the agreement by notifying AMD of its breach. Intel believes that position is inconsistent with the dispute resolution process outlined in the original agreement.
69 Comments on Intel Notifies AMD of Cross-License Breach
AMD came out with X64, and they licensed it to Intel, so Intel could make x64 CPU's.. In return AMD could continue making CPU's using x86 license.
Its a cross licensing structure..
But if both of them are smart, they'll quietly settle this out side the court room.
By having Nvidia making CPU's, it would place NVIDIA in direct competition with AMD in CPU industry, as well the GPU industry. And the move would also do little to improve the already sour relations between NVIDIA and Intel, the mobile CPU industry’s top player.
Intel is panicking, thus trying to bully AMD and make example out of them for Nvidia. my 2cents.
At the end of the day, Intel is being a bully since they hold the big stick and they want to continue to hold the big stick.
also Sun's Sparc cpus are real 64bit.
www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-intel-x86-cpu,7286.html#xtor=RSS-181SO not only can AMD cancel Intel's x64 license, but IMC in Core i7's and maybe multi-core too, if I'm not wrong. Suddenly it looks a lot like Intel has a lot to loose, so probably Intel is just playing the bullying game and no fight. Maybe its scared that Nvidia may use GlobalFoundries to make x86 CPU's
This all reminds me of the 1913 Federal reserve bank legislation.
Intel MUST have an x64 licence, but i dont think that will be an issue if AMD is completely assimulated into Intel.
But Cyrix went and died off anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter. We can thank Cyrix's competition as they forced intel to lower their prices.
The follow-on 1997 Cyrix-Intel litigation was the reverse: instead of Intel claiming that Cyrix 486 chips violated their patents, now Cyrix claimed that Intel's Pentium Pro and Pentium II violated Cyrix patents—in particular, power management and register renaming techniques. The case was expected to drag on for years but was settled quite promptly, by another mutual cross-license agreement. Intel and Cyrix now had full and free access to each other's patents. The settlement didn't say whether the Pentium Pro violated Cyrix patents or not; it simply allowed Intel to carry on making them either way—exactly as the previous settlement sidestepped Intel's claim that the Cyrix 486 violated Intel patents.
In the meantime their shares have fallen a lot too, so Intel is in much more troubles than what most people think. Not of dissapearing, no, but for a company as big and as important as Intel (and specially for investors), becoming just one more ina sea of many, is just like death. So they are panicking.