“New York’s attorney general filed antitrust charges against Intel Corp., alleging the chip giant threatened computer makers and paid huge kickbacks to stop them from using competitors’ chips,” Liz Rappaport and Don Clark report for The Wall Street Journal.

“The suit brought by New York’s top state prosecutor, Andrew Cuomo, alleges that for several years Intel sought to maintain its dominance by paying billions of dollars in kickbacks to computer makers under the guise of ‘rebates,’” Rappaport and Clark report. “The suit also alleges Intel threatened computer-makers—including Hewlett-Packard Co., International Business Machines Corp., and Dell Inc.—with retribution if they marketed products with chips made by competitors.”

Rappaport and Clark report, “Intel engaged in ‘a world-wide, systematic campaign of illegal conduct,’ Mr. Cuomo said in a press release. ‘Intel used bribery and coercion to maintain a stranglehold on the market.’”

“In 2006, Intel allegedly paid about $2 billion to Dell to maintain its relationship as the computer maker’s exclusive chip supplier—a ‘rebate’ package that was so large, it exceeded Dell’s own reported net income, according to the complaint,” Rappaport and Clark report.

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: This doesn’t have anything to do with that US$4.6 billion Luther Forest GLOBALFOUNDRIES (AMD) semiconductor fab — which is, oh, by the way, only the largest economic development project in the history of New York State — that recently broke ground, does it? Just asking, since such a massive thing would seem to have its own gravitational force, yet we see absolutely no mention of it in the Wall Street Journal article, that’s all.