EU General Court dismisses Intel's appeal

[Khato]

While I doubt this will stay out of the CPUs and Overclocking forum I'm going to give a try at keeping it where it belongs for a change. After almost two years the EU General Court finally ruled on Intel's appeal of the EU Commission's fine for anti-competitive behavior. There's a lot to read, and I believe this might be the first time that all of the 'evidence' is documented in the public domain in order to support the ruling. Full text of the judgment is available on InfoCuria - http://curia.europa.eu/juris/docume...=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=361891

 

[Anarchist420]

there would be so much more production without ip since inventors and entrepreneurs would not be suffering from lawyers, lobbyists, and State bureaucrats. institutions would not be as large or perpetuated if there were no ip which means that the modern ceo would have less of a place and people wouldnt be forced to spend so much money on management salaries. businesses like intel would be few and far between in a free society.

anyway, i really wish the eu would attack the u.s. ip system instead because intel's management is just acting in its own interest and the because the latter isnt the one violating the NAP; they just benefit from violation of the nap.

 

[ElFenix]

businesses like intel would be few and far between in a free society.

so you're admitting we wouldn't have high performance computer processors.

 

[ShintaiDK]

there would be so much more production without ip since inventors and entrepreneurs would not be suffering from lawyers, lobbyists, and State bureaucrats. institutions would not be as large or perpetuated if there were no ip which means that the modern ceo would have less of a place and people wouldnt be forced to spend so much money on management salaries. businesses like intel would be few and far between in a free society.

anyway, i really wish the eu would attack the u.s. ip system instead because intel's management is just acting in its own interest and the because the latter isnt the one violating the NAP; they just benefit from violation of the nap.

If everyone can just copy your work. Nobody is going to invest anything significant into R&D.

 

[theeedude]

They should order compulsory FRAND licensing of x86.

 

[chucky2]

What's sad is Intel limited AMD's chances to production (and hence revenue) when AMD needed it most. By the time the lawsuits started happening, Intel had already quashed any real lead AMD had hence making AMD's penetration into the market that much more difficult. What could AMD have done with much more volume, market share, and dollars? Would they be in the same place as they are now?

 

[ShintaiDK]

What's sad is Intel limited AMD's chances to production (and hence revenue) when AMD needed it most. By the time the lawsuits started happening, Intel had already quashed any real lead AMD had hence making AMD's penetration into the market that much more difficult. What could AMD have done with much more volume, market share, and dollars? Would they be in the same place as they are now?

I think you are confused. AMD on purpose delayed both a new uarch and 65nm to keep milking the K8 that they saw as unreachable for Intel. AMD was quite happy selling the most expensive consumer CPUs we ever had. And leaving the rest Intel. Hector and co had no intention of increasing their volume. Only to secure the high margin server and highened consumer products.

And what did AMD use all its money on? 5½B$ on ATI.

 

[TerryMathews]

AMD was quite happy selling the most expensive consumer CPUs we ever had.

And what did AMD use all its money on? 5½B$ on ATI.

I think you misspelled Intel. P4EE.

Also, time will tell but so far it appears that GPU tech is becoming more important than CPU tech. Its far too soon to call the purchase of ATi a mistake.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I think you misspelled Intel. P4EE.

Also, time will tell but so far it appears that GPU tech is becoming more important than CPU tech. Its far too soon to call the purchase of ATi a mistake.

A 5½B$ buy that today is worth what? 500M$? And made 200M$ profit over its span?

So now AMD only need to recoup another 4.8B$ and the investment is back. Unfortunately if they had bought canned beans instead of ATI. They would sit on something like 6½B$ today due to inflation. Rather than being 4.8B$ down the hole.

What did the P4EE cost? AMDs CPUs was over 1000$.

 

[Anarchist420]

so you're admitting we wouldn't have high performance computer processors.

not at all. i was saying that businesses would be less likely to last as long if they didnt have their risks subsidized. no one works for any institution forever but ip has a lot of influence on actions taken by the people who work for the institution. due to its influence, new management will be more likely to keep doing what kept the institution's profits stable in the past rather than take a risk with something new.

If everyone can just copy your work. Nobody is going to invest anything significant into R&D.

wrong. ben franklin didnt patent his inventions.

more is spent on advertising, management, lawyers, and lobbyists than r&d... big pharma's r&d expenditure is only 1/6 of their revenue (as senseamp pointed out) and i dont know why intel would be a whole lot different in that regard.

if there is a demand for something, then not having IP will not stop it from getting made.

ip has been around since at least the time of hammurabi and the first x86 microprocessor didnt come out until the 1970s. x86 is still being used 30 years later

 

[ShintaiDK]

wrong. ben franklin didnt patent his inventions.

James Watt for example did. 31 year patent on his steam machine. Without that patent we may never have had the industrial revolution.

Demand doesnt matter. Nobody is going to invest billions of $ into a product. Only to see everyone else copying it the next week. Its also called risk vs reward. The only products you would see is products with extremely low to zero R&D expenses.

 

[TerryMathews]

What did the P4EE cost? AMDs CPUs was over 1000$.

Same. http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Penti...ion 840 HH80551PG0882MM (BX80551PG3200F).html

 

[Khato]

The full text of the ruling being available meant that I was so productive at work today, haha >.> As stated in my initial post the most interesting bits were the various pieces of evidence and their discussion. It really goes to show that in the definition of the law Intel is guilty, but whether or not it was a direction from the top or somewhere in the middle-management range? Yeah, that's not really clear as the majority of the evidence sounds like it came from relatively low-level employees making inferences in order to make their sales quotas. That would collaborate the testimony of higher level management that continued to claim that there was no exclusivity directive. Again, not that such matters in the least since actions of any employee on behalf of the company count regardless. It's just nice to get more of the picture.

 

[chucky2]

I think you are confused. AMD on purpose delayed both a new uarch and 65nm to keep milking the K8 that they saw as unreachable for Intel. AMD was quite happy selling the most expensive consumer CPUs we ever had. And leaving the rest Intel. Hector and co had no intention of increasing their volume. Only to secure the high margin server and highened consumer products.

And what did AMD use all its money on? 5½B$ on ATI.

That's not how I remember that going down at all...but I don't remember the details any more so I won't argue with you. What I remember is Intel used its position with Dell to get Dell to not use AMD CPUs. Getting into first tier suppliers like Dell would have been huge for AMD, but they weren't able to get into them because of Intel.

That's about all I remember...so you can have the last word, I don't remember anything else on it at this point.