New York files antitrust suit against Intel

The lawsuit, the result of a nearly two-year investigation by Cuomo's office, is the latest in a long series of antitrust actions against Intel, including suits from competitors and from federal and international regulators. Most recently, the European Union fined the company more than US$1.45 billion for antitrust violations.

Now Cuomo, a Democrat who is expected to run for governor next year, has launched yet another assault.

“Rather than compete fairly, Intel used bribery and coercion to maintain a stranglehold on the market,” Cuomo said in a statement. “Intel's actions not only unfairly restricted potential competitors, but also hurt average consumers, who were robbed of better products and lower prices.”

Cuomo's office maintained that Intel paid or threatened some of the world's leading computer makers — Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM among them — in an effort to prevent the companies from doing business with Intel's main rival, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

The payments, the complaint alleges, came in the form of high-dollar “volume rebates” to the computer makers, though Cuomo's office dismissed the rebates as simple “payoffs.”

Antitrust experts said the move could draw more attention to Intel from federal regulators, who under President Barack Obama may be more receptive to cases against dominant companies.

“This is a major American corporation with a global reach,” said Jeffrey Shinder, an antitrust attorney at the law firm Constantine Cannon. “A major state stepping into that domain could motivate Washington to take some action.”

The case is assembled in part from internal e-mails collected from Intel's business partners and from within the company itself, according to the filing.

“ `I understand the point about the accounts wanting a full AMD portfolio,' “ wrote an IBM executive in 2005, according to a statement from Cuomo's office. “`The question is, can we afford to accept the wrath of Intel ... ?'”

Intel questioned the timing of the suit, six months before another large lawsuit filed against it by AMD is to go to trial. Intel has said that the trial could resolve many of the issues raised by Cuomo.

“In our view, neither consumers ... nor justice are being served by this filing today,” said Intel spokesman Tom Beermann.

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