November 5, 2009
1. What I’d really like to talk about today is the lawsuit filed by the State of New York against Intel. But, I am proscribed from doing so in any great detail by certain ethical obligations to my client (Intel). So, I will just state this very generally. There are two federal agencies charged with enforcing the antitrust law, the FTC and DOJ (depending on the type of business and the conduct at issue). There are numerous private actors capable of doing the same (for example only, there is a major lawsuit against Intel by AMD, its largest competitor, pending in the D. Del. filed in 2005, and going to trial next year). It is no secret, by the way, that the FTC is investigating Intel as we speak . Without getting into the dubious merits of their investigations, one wonders why the State of NY feels compelled to poke their heads into a matter that is already being investigated by federal enforcers, and is the subject of one of the largest litigations in history. What is the benefit to the taxpayers of the State of New York? Moreover, how does it benefit the economy? Only a few states engage in vigorous enforcement of the antitrust laws as to global companies and for good reason–its not efficient for them to do so. One might look at various examples where states bring high-publicity complaints against large companies and think about what their motives are. I only pose the question, and leave it to you to discuss. Should state agencies get involved at this level generally?
Tom, my husband and I both worked on different aspects of the lawsuit that led to the breakup of the Bell system, so I have a great deal of sympathy for any company subjected to this process.
The DOJ lawyers kept asking David to tell them (in so many words) “where the bodies are buried” which is not different from asking “When did you stop beating your wife.”
I’d be in favor of Intel being knocked down to size a little, but not because it’s some “scarry and evil mega-corporation” (after all I LOVE Walmart). No, my dislike for Intel is from a purely technical perspective. Put simply, Intel products are frequently over priced for their performance. While they sometimes beat out AMD, the prices charged are not worth it. And frequently AMD has equal or higher performing chips for lower costs. Finally, anti-monopoly pressure is vital in the computer industry to spur innovation. If Intel and AMD (and NVIDIA and ATI) hadn’t been sparing with each other for over a decade, the technical advances that have allowed the fantastic graphics and peformance computer games such as Half Life 2 and Fallout 3 would not have been possible.