Who, what why, where, when
It may not have shocked too many people that chip-maker Intel has been slapped with yet another antitrust law suit over "illegal threats and collusion" to monopolise CPU market, but what is surprising this time around is who's doing the suing and why.
As for the "who?", the Attorney General of New York, Andrew Cuomo, is the man taking on the role of grand high inquisitor, filing an 87-page complaint, almost duplicative of the AMD case filed in Delaware back in June 2005.
Cuomo took care to put his own spin on things, adding bits and bobs from the recently concluded antitrust case in the EU, but is there more to the New York AG's motives than simply rapping Intel on the knuckles for a purported "systematic worldwide campaign of illegal, exclusionary conduct to maintain its monopoly power and prices in the market for x86 microprocessors"?
Since June 2005, Intel and AMD have exchanged over 200-million pages of documents pertaining to the case, Intel has conducted depositions totaling 2,200 hours, and has submitted thousands of pages of expert reports to the court of Delaware, with yet more depositions to come.
The first of two pre-trial hearings is already scheduled for December 15 in Delaware and a trial date has already been set for March 29, 2010, just under five months' away. It isn't illogical, therefore, to question why the New York AG saw fit to add his two cents to a matter already going to trial imminently.
True, proceedings don't arise overnight and the actual investigation by the NY AG began in January 2008, but the slow wheels of justice seem to have picked up the pace just as New York's election season kicks off.
