The high-tech world got saner in November. Intel settled its anti-trust dispute with AMD, Ericsson withdrew its anti-trust objections against Qualcomm, the EU dropped its anti-trust proceedings against Qualcomm and the EU agreed the terms to settle its anti-trust case against Rambus.
Qualcomm seems to have pursued a policy of gradually picking off the complainants in the EU case.
Nokia withdrew its complaint earlier this year, following the settlement of its multiple legal actions with Qualcomm, Broadcom, another EU complainant, also withdrew its complaint after a legal settlement with Qualcomm, and the other complainants, TI, Panasonic and NEC have said they will withdraw their complaints.
"All the complainants have now withdrawn or indicated their intention to withdraw their complaints," said the EU.
Intel has followed a similar route, paying its only complainant, AMD, to drop its anti-trust civil suit against Intel. This may head off the US FTC's possible initiation of anti-trust proceedings against Intel. It is unlikely, however, to end the criminal anti-trust proceedings brought by the State of
Intel has accompanied its defence against the European case with derogatory public statements about the EU which are gratuitously inflammatory. Settling with AMD may indicate a change in the company's aggressive stance against the public authorities.
Meanwhile the EU will announce next week that anti-trust proceedings may be dropped against Rambus in return for Rambus agreeing to cap royalties at 1.5 % for DRAM IP and 2% per unit for memory controller IP for five years from the end of April, 2010.
Rambus will not be fined by the EU, and will not be found guilty of wrongdoing.
Technology battles are returning to the marketplace from the courtroom, and that's good.
Money is better spent on R&D than lawyers.
David, do you think if we all get together and complain to Brussels about Qualcomm AND Intel, they'll pay us off to go and relax on a beach somewhere ?
Just a thought :-)
Worth a try, Mike