[WinMac] RED HOT: Intel partially settles with FTC
Dan Schwartz(expresso[at]snip.net)
Mon, 08 Mar 1999 12:07:03 -0500
>From <http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2221415,00.html>:
FTC, Intel reach partial settlement
By Margaret Kane, ZDNN
March 8, 1999 6:27 AM PT
The Federal Trade Commission's counsel has reached a partial settlement
with Intel Corp. in the antitrust case against the company.
The proposed settlement must still be approved by the Commission, and would
still leave some issues to be investigated by the Commission, according to
an FTC statement.
"If approved by the commission, the proposed settlement being recommended
by complaint counsel would resolve the allegations contained in the
commission's complaint on June 8," said William Baer, director of the FTC's
Bureau of Competition.
The FTC filed charges against Intel (Nasdaq:INTC) on June of last year. The
two sides filed a motion with the administrative law judge hearing the case
to suspend a hearing on the charges, which was to start tomorrow.
Intel has been accused of withholding critical information about its
processors from customers, in order to protect its alleged monopoly hold on
the market.
Intel has said that the actions were simply part of the business, but the
FTC has charged that they constituted illegal antitrust behavior.
A step in the right direction
The FTC counsel said it expects to submit a proposed settlement to the full
Commission within days.
A spokesman for Intel said: "Intel is pleased with the agreement and we
believe it provides adequate value for our intellectual property. Other
than that we're not going to comment on the specific terms."
Dan Scovel, semiconductor analyst at Fahnestock & Co. in New York said
Intel has had an ongoing image problem that could have negatively affected
its trial performance.
"In the past years Intel has stumbled badly in PR, the Pentium bug the
privacy issue with P3 -- they're not really taking control of the issue
from PR perspective."
But Scovel acknowledged that the settlement may be a good PR move for
Intel. "One thing we've seen her in the last few years is there seems to be
some hope of improving the way [Intel] presents itself in public. They've
started to do the things that make them more popular sooner. The settlement
may be a step in that direction."
Reuters contributed to this report
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