Austin (TX) - In one of the most stunning developments in the hardware industry in past years, AMD has decided to take Intel to court: AMD claims that Intel has violated antitrust laws by unfairly maintaining its monopoly in the microprocessor industry.

Following a Japanese antitrust ruling against Intel in March of this year, AMD is turning up the heat on Intel by filing an antitrust suit against Intel and its Japanese subsidiary Intel Kabushiki Kaisha. Similar to the antitrust claims that were brought against Microsoft in the late 1990s by the US government, AMD accuses Intel to have used unfair competitive methods to maintain its monopoly and keep AMD from increasing its market share.

The suit mentions seven potential antitrust violations, ranging from forcing customers into exclusive deals, conditioned rebates, the creation of a discriminatory rebate system, threat of retaliation, enforced quotas, pressure to boycott AMD products, and use of industrial standards against AMD.

As a result, the company claims, AMD's market share AMD's was "capped" and prevented the manufacturer "from expanding to reach the minimum efficient levels of scale necessary to compete with Intel as a predominant supplier to major customers."

Intel declined to comment on the accusations.

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