Once all the inflated claims of both sides are swept out of the way, Advanced Micro Devices Inc seems to have won pretty much all it wanted from Intel Corp in the arbitration decision handed down by retired Superior Court Judge Barton Phelps. He granted Advanced Micro permanent worldwide royalty-free rights to manufacture and sell its Am386 line of microprocessors, and $15.3m damages from Intel for its failure to deliver masks of some parts covered by the second source agreement between the two – a very long way from the $2,270m that Advanced Micro had been demanding. The cash award was low because the judge had also decided that Advanced Micro did indeed fail to deliver parts of equal value to Intel as was required in the original agreement. Judge Phelps restricted the rights granted to Advanced Micro to a permanent royalty-free non-exclusive non-transferable worldwide right, under any and all Intel copyrights, patents, trade secrets, and maskwork rights contained in the current versions of its reverse engineered 80386 family of microprocessors. Intel won nothing on the counterclaims against Advanced Micro that it raised during the arbitration. The award is subject to confirmation by the superior court and Intel will try to get parts of the arbitration decision rejected. It will also pursue its microcode copyright infringement lawsuit against Advanced Micro and will argue that the Federal Court should not allow the arbitration ruling to be used as a defence.
