U.S. regulators seen pursuing Intel even after AMD

By Diane Bartz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government is expected to plow ahead with its antitrust case against Intel Corp (INTC.O: 株価, 企業情報, レポート) even after losing critical support from the chip maker's main rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD.N: 株価, 企業情報, レポート).

AMD and Intel announced on Thursday that they have settled more than a decade of legal wrangling, with Intel agreeing to pay its smaller rival $1.25 billion and AMD withdrawing all regulatory complaints against the world's largest chipmaker.

The deal requires Intel to end some practices, including making discounts conditional on customers buying exclusively Intel microprocessors, said Richard Brosnick, an antitrust expert with Butzel Long.

But it allows Intel to continue other practices that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission frowns on, such as giving retroactive volume-based discounts, he said.

"I'd be surprised if they (FTC) just went away because this does not cover a lot of things that they have said that they're concerned about," said Brosnick.

The FTC had a relatively business-friendly approach during the eight years of the Bush administration, but has taken a tougher stance under Democratic Chairman Jon Leibowitz.

It is investigating Intel after allegations by AMD that the larger company had abused its dominance of the $280 billion chip market. Intel makes 80 percent of the world's central processing units, the brains of personal computers.