Press release
Intel has filed a motion in Delaware seeking sanctions against Advanced Micro Devices in the pending antitrust case. Intel asserts AMD failed to adequately retain documents in the case it filed against Intel in June of 2005. Intel also asserts that AMD misrepresented its efforts and tried to hide its failures from the Court and Intel.
In March of 2007 Intel disclosed to AMD and the Court that it had experienced lapses in document retention in this case. Following that disclosure Intel embarked on a court approved plan to remediate or correct the mistakes made in the discovery process. This effort has cost Intel tens of millions of dollars and Intel believes it has complied with the plan and successfully corrected the problem consistent with approved plan. As a result Intel delivered nearly two hundred million pages of documents to AMD.
During this process AMD has consistently asserted that Intel was negligent in its actions and that their case was somehow harmed by this issue. Meanwhile from the outset AMD has claimed that they had instituted an "exemplary" scheme for document retention and that any problems they had were "innocent and innocuous" and any data losses were "inconsequential."
There is now evidence that appears to show that AMD's "exemplary" scheme to retain documents was not even close. Intel has discovered a number of problems with AMD process, including certain executives and employees at AMD that failed to retain documents and emails. It also appears that AMD failed to begin retaining documents when it reasonably anticipated the litigation, something that is required by law. In addition, AMD engaged in a secret scheme to selectively restore documents from backup tapes to analyze the scope of their retention failures, all the while denying to Intel and the Court that it was doing so or that there ever was a problem.
Download a copy of the Intel motion. (PDF 842KB)