SOA and WOA Magazine

Intel is paying AMD $1.25 billion to settle the massive private antitrust suit AMD has lodged in Delaware. AMD will also drop two cases against Intel it has pending in Japan and withdraw all of its regulatory complaints worldwide.

Intel has also agreed to abide by a “set of business practices” that has yet to detailed.

The US suit, which reportedly resulted the exchange of hundreds of millions of pages of documents and thousands of hours of depositions involved most OEMs, was to go to trial in March and promised to be highly entertaining.

The companies have also resolved Intel’s legal challenge to AMD’s right to even make x86 chips that was created by the divestiture of its fabs to a joint venture 70% owned by a third party.

The companies this morning issued a joint statement saying, “While the relationship between the two companies has been difficult in the past, this agreement ends the legal disputes and enables the companies to focus all of our efforts on product innovation and development.”

Under terms of the agreement, AMD and Intel each get patent rights under a new five-year cross-license agreement, Intel and AMD will give up claims of breach of the previous license pact.

The deal may not save Intel from legal action by the Federal Trade Commission, which has been investigating Intel for some time, and it is now looking at an antitrust suit just brought by the state of New York.

The companies have scheduled separate conference calls this morning.