antitrust lawsuit

On March 9, a federal judge dismissed portions of a lawsuit against Intel Corporations for violating antitrust laws. The plaintiffs claimed that Intel drove up prices on some PCs that used Intel's chips. They also state that Intel was able to do this by barring computer makers from using chips from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. The judge did this because the claim is concerning what Intel did in a foreign country, so the US does not have jurisdiction and even if they did and Intel was found at fault, the plaintiffs could not calculate the amount of damages incurred by US consumers and businesses due to the fact that they have to base it on the sales of US companies and not on foreign ones. However, the judge also ruled that Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and foreign consumers can use foreign evidence to build a case in their country. Intel has a motion to dismiss, claiming that instead of artificially raising prices, they were actually lowering prices in an attempt to compete with Advanced Micro Devices Inc. That motion will be decided by the end of March.