Intel takes AMD anti-trust battle to the US

Intel lawyers are suing AMD in the US as part of the chip firm's defence in an anti-trust case that it has already lost in Europe.

The AMD versus Intel fight is going for a rematch in the US courts, and it appears that Intel is getting mean right from the start.

The company has asked a judge to throw the book at AMD for failing to retain documents in the case filed against Intel in June 2005.

Intel also asserts that AMD misrepresented its efforts and tried to hide its failures from the court and Intel.

Intel complained to the court in March 2007 that AMD had not kept certain documents pertaining to the case, and a court order to fix the problem was issued.

Intel claims that this effort has cost it tens of millions of dollars, and that it has delivered nearly 200 million pages of documents to AMD in discovery.

However, while AMD was telling the world that it had instituted an " exemplary" scheme for document retention, and that any problems it had were " innocent and innocuous" and any data losses "inconsequential", Intel is saying that this is far from the case.

An Intel spokesperson said that the firm had evidence appearing to show that AMD's "exemplary" scheme to retain documents was not even close.

"Intel has discovered a number of problems with AMD process, including certain executives and employees at AMD that failed to retain documents and emails. It also appears that AMD failed to begin retaining documents when it reasonably anticipated the litigation, something that is required by law," said Intel in a court filing (PDF).

Intel claims that AMD engaged in a secret scheme to selectively restore docu ments from backup tapes to analyse the scope of its retention failures, while denying to Intel and the court that it was doing so or that there ever had been a problem.