Antitrust lawsuit filed against Intel in USA
Following the lead of foreign regulators, New York’s attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, filed a federal antitrust lawsuit Wednesday against Intel, the world’s largest chip maker.
The lawsuit charges that Intel violated state and federal laws by abusing its dominant position in the chip market to keep its main rival, Advanced Micro Devices, at bay. Intel has faced similar lawsuits in Asia and Europe, and in May the European Commission fined the company a record $1.45 billion for antitrust violations.
These cases have largely revolved around deals Intel had struck with computer makers and retailers that, regulators said, pressured them into picking the company’s microprocessors – which serve as the central chip inside personal computers and servers – instead of competing products from A.M.D.
“Rather than compete fairly, Intel used bribery and coercion to maintain a stranglehold on the market,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. “Intel’s actions not only unfairly restricted potential competitors, but also hurt average consumers who were robbed of better products and lower prices.”
Let me see if I can follow this. The United States federal government creates artificial scarcity in the market by granting intellectual monopoly privileges to particular market actors. Then this artificially large company throws it’s weight around… which in a free market and even in a non-free market should be more or less legitimate. If they want to sell at no or negative profit to out *compete* their competitors for a time… so be it.
The former is the problem… not the latter.
I’m interested in seeing who they supposedly bribed… because Black’s law dictionary defines bribery as dealing with government / public officials. A private sector individual can’t bribe another private sector individual. There is nothing wrong with paying another for keeping quiet or changing behavior. The latter is exactly what trade is.
Again… the government created this “problem.” The solution is less government intervention in the marketplace, not more. End government enforcement of intellectual property laws.
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