Judicial battle over the x86

Last October, AMD announced that it was ceding its factories to a new entity, GlobalFoundries, to be 44.4% owned by AMD and 55.6% by ATIC (Advanced Technology Investment Company), an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund.

The only problem is this package doesn’t seem to have pleased Intel. Intel and AMD have had a technology cross-licensing agreement since 2001, but according to Intel, GlobalFoundaries is not a subsidiary as defined in the agreement. As a result, according to Intel, AMD should not be allowed to get GlobalFoundaries to manufacture CPUs using technology that is covered by the agreement. Intel says that the structure of the AMD-ATIC partnership violates a confidential part of the agreement.

Intel has therefore notified AMD of this and has given AMD 60 days to resolve the situation, after which it will lose any rights resulting from the agreement. According to AMD, this is not the procedure outlined in the agreement for resolving disputes and, as such, Intel itself is violating the accord, which in turn gives AMD the right to withdraw Intel’s rights to AMD patents…!

All this should keep the lawyers pretty busy over the next 60 days or so.