Amid worried reports, Intel is not looking to sue AMD on patent violation, after the Sunnyvale, Calif., company decided to split-up into a fabless design house and a foundry. At least not yet!
“Unlike what was said, we’re not afraid of anything [Intel was said to be afraid over its X86 patent rights over the AMD deal]. We’re just trying to understand the nature of the deal to see what happens to our patents”, said Intel’s spokesperson Chuck Mulloy in a recent conversation I had at Intel’s headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif.
Intel has a broad patent license agreement for its X86 instruction set with AMD since 1976. The last one was signed in 1996 and expires at the end of next year. That contract is available online but some parts remain confidential and were redacted out of the document.
“We’ve suggested to AMD to publish the agreements in its entirety but AMD refused. And that’s there right to do so. But that’s also why I can’t talk about what are our clear concerns regarding this case”, added Mulloy.
Intel main concerns are about ensuring protection over the secrecy and the intellectual property of its “strategic” X86 instruction set and its architecture as, if this was widely available, could let anyone build X86 compatible chips without paying a penny to Intel.
“And right now, AMD is paying us a royalty”, confirmed the Intel spokesman.
Intel is waiting for AMD to publish its proxy statement – probably in the next weeks or so – with more details about the split-up agreement before engaging in more serious talk.
[...] Larry Rulison, Business writer wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt“Unlike what was said, we’re not afraid of anything [Intel was said to be afraid over its X86 patent rights over the AMD deal]. We’re just trying to understand the nature of the deal to see what happens to our patents”, said Intel’s … [...]