In an earnest that Intel Corp really has abandoned the litigious bludgeon in favour of even fiercer competition in the market, the company has signed a new patent cross-licence agreement with the company it previously pursued most fiercely through the courts, one-time partner Advanced Micro Devices Inc. The deal gives Intel and Advanced Micro rights to use each others’ patents and some copyrights, but specifically excludes microprocessor microcode copyrights, which means that Advanced Micro must continue to clone Intel parts in a quarantined reverse engineering lab. The cross-licence is royalty-bearing for products that use some technologies although specific financial terms were not disclosed. Advanced Micro, a one-time iAPX-86 second source until Intel struck it off and sued it for failing to deliver original support chips, finally settled the litigation a year ago in an out-of-court deal under it paid Intel $58m damages and Intel in turn agreed to pay the Sunnyvale, California-based chipmaker about $18m for breach of contract.
