Re: If AMD is competitive then there's no monopoly...
Hi Elmer,
Anti-trust can occur in the absence of monopoly, and monopoly is irrelevant to extortion. And since these parts are crossing state lines, cases can be brought in Federal court, on the basis of interference with interstate commerce (gives the plaintiff some control over venue, which can be an important advantage).
If Intel is involving itself in AMD's contracts with Gateway, Taiwanese motherboard production supporting AMD chips and other areas, it could constitute threatening a second party with retaliation for what is essentially a third-party transaction. This could get them into trouble both civilly (interference with other's contractual relationships, RICO) and criminally (extortion, RICO, and anti-trust).
I'm skeptical that most of the measures being used by Intel would be considered illegal only in the context of monopoly. In any event, the rule of thumb is generally that having 2/3 of the market constitutes a monopoly, and we do have the recent Microsoft decision as a precedent, don't we?
Isn't Intel's current market share percentage mid 80s?
More than 3 instances of an illegal action trigger RICO, with its trebling of damages, and anti-trust violations are automatic treble damage awards statutes. Since we're potentially talking about multi-billion dollar damages, this could become expensive, even for Intel.
Regards,
Dan |
