Posted 11/04/09 at 12:45:15 PM by Paul Lilly

It seems like everywhere Intel turns it's being sued over alleged antitrust violations. The latest lawsuit comes from New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who claims Intel threatened computer makers and made a series of illegal payments to coerce them into using its chips. In other words, the same accusations AMD has been harping about for a good many years now.

"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 competitor, but also hurt average consumers who were robbed of better products and lower prices."

Intel has faced similar lawsuits earlier in the year, and in May, the European Commission hammered Intel with a record $1.45 billion fine for antitrust violations. Intel is currently appealing the ruling.

The latest lawsuit is significant because it's the first formal antitrust action against Intel by any government agency in the U.S. in more than a decade, the New York Times reports. Intel has been under investigation by the FTC since 2008, but that hasn't led to any formal proceedings.

"These are separate investigations, but it would be very surprising for New York Sate to go off on its own without being fairly confident the FTC would pursue Intel as well," a person familiar with the state's investigation told NYT.

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Posted 10/30/09 at 12:35:46 PM by Paul Lilly

If only spammers had the dough to pay their court-appointed fines, Facebook could make a full-time living in the courtroom. The social networking site slapped Internet marketer Sanford Wallace with a lawsuit alleging he was accessing Facebook accounts without permission and posting fake messages on users' Walls. The judge didn't take kindly to Wallace's actions and awarded Facebook with a little over $711 million in damages.

Not a bad day in court for the social networking site, but Facebook doesn't stand to receive anywhere close to that amount, and it knows that.

"While we dont' expect to receive the vast majority of the award, we hope that this will act as a continued deterrent against these criminals," said Sam O'Rourke in a company blog post.

Maybe it will, maybe it wont.  Last November, Facebook won an $873 million judgment against Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital for a phishing scheme, but has yet (if ever) to collect on that. And therein lies the problems with these judgments.

Getting back to Wallace, the exorbitant fine may not be the only thing he has to worry about. The judge in the case referred Wallace to the U.S. Attorney's Office requesting that he be prosecuted for criminal contempt, so it's possible he could serve some jail time.

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Posted 10/28/09 at 02:40:16 PM by Paul Lilly

Sony isn't the only one in hot water with U.S. antitrust regulators. Both Toshiba and Hitachi have also fallen under the watchful eye of the U.S. Department of Justice and will have their optical device divisions investigated, The Inquirer reports.

Once again, not a whole lot of details are yet known, but just like with Sony, it's believed that the DoJ is sniffing out something afoul with each optical makers' Blu-ray line. More specifically, it's likely each company is being probed for potential price fixing allegations.

Before being knocked out of contention, HD-DVD players could be snagged for as low as $99, which coincided with a promotion to receive a small handful of free HD-DVD movies through the mail. For the most part, Blu-ray pricing has yet to come down to the same level. It should also be noted that Sony, Hitachi, and Toshiba account for about 60 percent of the optical drive market, according to some statistics.

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Posted 10/28/09 at 08:09:47 AM by Paul Lilly

According to an anonymous source, Hector Ruiz, 63-year-old former chief executive officer of AMD, is the unnamed "AMD executive" government prosecutors allege provided information to a defendant in the Galleon insider trading case, Bloomberg reports..

Ruiz, who  stepped down as AMD's CEO last year and now serves as chairman of chip spinoff Globalfoundries, hasn't been charged with any wrongdoing in the case, nor do prosecutors say he profited from insider trading. But he is accused of discussing with Danielle Chiesi, who is alleged to be part of the Balleon insider trading ring, timing of the chip factory's spinoff in September 2008, ahead of the announcement of the deal.

"You know, we're gonna shock the hell out of everybody," the AMD executive told Chiesi, according a transcript of the September conversation included in court documents.

If the anonymous source turns out to be correct, Ruiz would be the highest ranking executive involved in the case. Other defendants in the case include IBM executive Robert Moffat and Rajiv Goel, who helped direct investments at Intel.

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Posted 10/22/09 at 08:13:17 PM by Paul Lilly

AT&T has a bone to pick with several big-name LCD makers, and it will do it in court. The telco has sued a number of display manufacturers over allegedly fixing the price of more than 300 million mobile LCD screens.

Those on the receiving end of the lawsuit include Samsung, LG Display, Optronics, Sharp, and Chungwa. According to the lawsuit, the display makers "formed an international cartel illegally to restrict competition in the United States in the market for LCD panels."

AT&T called the whole situation a "conspiracy," accusing the defendants of agreeing to eliminate competition and fix LCD panel prices that they knew would be incorporated in LCD products and sold in the U.S.

This isn't the first price fixing scandal to hit the LCD industry, nor is it the first time LG, Chunghwa, and Sharp have been tied to price fixing allegations. All three agreed to plead guilty to similar charges in November 2008 and to pay $585 million in criminal fines.

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Posted 10/20/09 at 09:50:01 AM by Paul Lilly

Robert Moffat, IBM's highest ranking hardware executive and front runner to carry the CEO torch, has been indicted on chargers of insider trading. So has Rajiv Goel, a managing director of Intel subsidiary, Intel Capital, and Anil Kumar, a director at consulting firm McKinsey & Co. and adviser to AMD.

Insider trading carries some serious repercussions, and if found guilty, all three could be looking at prison time. And it's not looking good. Thanks to wiretapped phone conversations and statements from an informant, SEC investigators believe they can show how the trio used inside information and well-timed trades to accumulate more than $25 million in illegal gains.

One alleged illegal instance includes Goel giving billionaire investor Raj Rajaratnam a heads up on January 8, 2007 that Intel share prices would likely rise over the next couple of days. According to the feds, this prompted Rajaratnam to purchase 1 million shares of Intel stock, and then 500,000 more on January 11. On January 16, he unloaded all of his Intel stock, netting about $1 million profits in a matter of four days.

Goel is also accused of alerting Rajaratnam about an impending deal between Clearwire and Sprint, which ended up netting him another $750,000 in profits.

There's a ton more to the scandal, all of which you can read here.

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Posted 10/09/09 at 11:45:01 AM by Paul Lilly

Down but not out, RealNetworks said it will file an appeal and ask that a court ruling to ban sales of its DVD-copying software, RealDVD, be lifted.

The original ruling dates back to August when a federal district judge issued a preliminary injunction to halt sales of the software after film studios successfully argued that RealDVD violated copyright law. The injunction drew major interest from consumers looking for some clarification in the murky Fair Use waters.

RealNetwork's appeal only addresses the injunction, not the case itself, which, barring a resolution, is moving towards a jury trial.

"What they're going to argue is that somehow the legal basis for the injunction is wanting," said Denise Howell, an appellate and technology lawyer. "They will say that there has been an error of law somewhere along the way but they're going to try and undo the injunction. Real is facing an uphill battle."

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Posted 10/09/09 at 08:01:46 AM by Paul Lilly

Google's Voice service is causing quite a stir in Congress, as both Republicans and Democrats have called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to investigate Google's ability to block calls to rural telephone exchanges. But it's the dispute between Google and Apple where things get interesting.

Prompting the probe, Google's Voice app is not available on the iPhone, which led AT&T to argue that Google would have an unfair advantage if not held to the same rules and regulations as telcos. Now here's the kicker - Google Voice would be available on the iPhone, had Apple not rejected it. Apple said it was still looking into how the app works and doesn't feel comfortable with it altering the iPhone's telephone functionality and user interface.

That doesn't necessarily mean AT&T doesn't have a legitimate complaint. The telco points out that Google Voice blocks calls in certain rural areas to cut back costs, something which the phone companies aren't allowed to do. But at least one attorney says the complaint is hypocritical of AT&T.

"The only difference between Google's alleged call blocking and AT&T's refusal to pay terminating access charges for conference and chat-line calls is that the (local carriers) are forced to incur the costs of terminating AT&T's customers' traffic," attorney Ross Buntrock wrote in a letter to the FCC.

So what does Google say about all this? The search giant's stance is that Google Voice isn't a traditional phone service since it uses a Web software tool, and therefor isn't subject to the same rules and regulations as telephone companies.

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