This is quite a blow to plaintiffs but the federal judge in Delaware has already dismissed portions of a class-action lawsuit filed against Intel for violating antitrust laws. U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Farnan, in a ruling issued Wednesday, said that the U.S. court has no jurisdiction over the foreign conduct claims in a lawsuit that seeks to claim monetary damages for U.S. consumers and businesses who purchased PCs with Intel chips.
The said consumers complained that they were forced to pay too much because Intel used it near-monopoly position to prevent computer makers from using Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) chips. Intel’s move has eliminated competition and has kept prices artificially high.
The ruling allows the plaintiffs only to seek monetary damages in the U.S. court for sales made inside the U.S., such as computer purchases made via Dell, Gateway, HP, etc. The plaintiffs could not calculate the damages they won by including PC sales by foreign vendors like Acer Inc., Sony Corp, and Toshiba Corp. The judge also ruled that foreign evidence could be used to build a domestic case against Intel.
The class-action suit is only concerned about the harm done to domestic consumers. However, some problems have emerged as they go along the case. Firstly, Intel admitted that it had lost many internal e-mail records related to the AMD case. This would make the collection of evidence quite difficult. Furthermore, Intel filed a motion to dismiss the entire case because it says that customers were never harmed by increased prices.