taking a high-ranking guy like this from Intel, if they're not careful, they'll get slapped with Patent Infringement suits from Intel for the work he's done there.
You are probably thinking of
Trade Secrets, not patent infringement, here.
That is an issue anytime any employee changes employers, true enough. But the burden of providing evidence/proof would fall to Intel.
AMD doesn't have to defend itself until Intel attempts to argue a case that trade secrets have been divulged.
The proof that Intel would need to prove this would come from products that make it into the marketplace. Typical new product cycle time is 3-4 yrs.
So at best AMD has nothing to worry about for 3-4 yrs. But that assumes they wanted to hire him for his trade secrets, which is doubtful.
At that level of management you aren't hiring people for what they know (in terms of specifics on your competition), that is what you hire engineers for (individual contributors that were creating those specifics for your competitor)...rather, you hire managers at that level because of what they can do for you - manage large groups of people effectively and deliver on corporate strategies that are already set in stone.
I remember one time we hired a high level manager from Intel from their Flash division (this was a long time ago, mid-90s), but we didn't hire him to tell us how to make our flash better like Intel's flash. We hired him because we knew he knew how to create a world-class organization which in turn could/would be capable of developing and creating world-class flash products 5-10 yrs down the road.
AMD probably hired this guy with the same thinking, and that is why Intel won't bother to spend the money on lawyer salaries worrying about it. By the time AMD could get a product to market that would leverage any of the trade secret info inside this guy's head, Intel will already have moved 4 yrs ahead of that trade secret info on their own in the meantime. But they probably aren't so happy over losing an effective high-level manager.
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