An interesting perspective on the lawsuit that you will never hear here. Duke is an Attorney with experience in the area. I'm not pretending this is anything more than his opinion but it is an educated opinion and worthy or a read.
Ahh, The Duke of URL... You really need to find another trusted advisor.
* Some of his arguments (incestuously cross-referencing golfbum's claims, BTW) boil down to "Intel: You Can Trust 'Em!" (See: "BUT the real answer is that AMD has be screaming this for 20 years and Intel's VERY capable legal staff, some posters here included, are VERY aware and have structured deals like ad budgets that I assume, have been okayed by lower courts.")
(BTW, did he REALLY just claim that members of Intel's legal staff are posting on IHUB's AMD forum?!?)
* Other arguments boil down to, "If AMD had a case, they'd SHOUT FROM THE MOUNTAINTOPS all of their evidence!"... Absurd.
* He misrepresents the exceptions in the Clayton act that allow for differential pricing, despite wording it so vaguely that there's hardly any information content anyways: He says differential pricing is allowed "if the pricing, simplistically put, is based on the manufacturer's savings for volume production, etc."
He's wrong for several reasons:
A) His claim simply doesn't make sense. What about volume production gives legitimacy to offering certain customers discounts? Does Intel have a special, more efficient fab just for Dell?
B) The Clayton Act's differential pricing exceptions are actually for efficiencies gained in the scale of interactions with the customer, such as bulk deliveries, bulk packaging, or having fewer account managers per CPU sold. I.e. If conditions make Intel's sales and deliveries to Dell more efficient with larger volumes, Intel can pass on the savings due to those efficiencies on to Dell.
B') Here is the relevent line from the Clayton Act:
Provided, That nothing herein contained shall prevent differentials which make only due allowance for differences in the cost of manufacture, sale, or delivery resulting from the differing methods or quantities in which such commodities are to such purchasers sold or delivered:
C) Intel's technique for differentiating prices, i.e. rebates, shelf-space subsidies, etc., are explicitly NOT exempt under that exception in the Clayton Act. They are contingent upon the customer meeting certain qualifications, not Intel gaining efficiencies due to larger volume sales.
* He also, contradictingly, argues that Intel may have in fact had exclusionary agreements with customers, but AMD will never be able to prove it because they weren't "official." (See: "The truth is there weren't any such agreements, in any manner formal enough to prove that in any way Intel used UNdue influence.")
* There are more inconsistencies and contradictions within his arguments:
On one hand he thinks that AMD's pending aquisition of ATI is because without ATI, AMD's products were uncompetitive vs. Intel's, and THAT's the reason Intel has been so dominant. (Certainly not because they abused their market power.)
On the other hand, in the very next sentence, he touts the success of the Opteron, as proof that with competitive products, AMD is perfectly capable of gaining marketshare. (Gains that certainly have nothing to do with AMD filing a antitrust lawsuit against Intel.)
Bottom line: If Duke is a competent antitrust lawyer, I'm a friggin' Supreme Court Justice.
fpg |
