All of their cross licensing agreements are private so everything is speculation. That being said...
In 2009 AMD divested itself of it's manufacturing arm by spinning it off into GlobalFoundries (GF) which was a joint venture with Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC). Intel sued AMD, GF, and ATIC for violation of the terms of AMD and Intel's prior cross licensing agreements.
Later that year Intel and AMD entered into a Settlement Agreement to halt several on going lawsuits both parties had against each other. The AMD/GF/ATIC lawsuit was one of those that was part of the settlement agreement. Under section 4 of the settlement agreement are the mutual releases each company agreed to. Section 4.2 is Intel's release and it states the following.
4.2 Intel Release. Except for the rights and obligations expressly created or reserved by this Agreement and by the agreements described in Section 3.7, Intel does hereby irrevocably release, acquit and forever discharge AMD, GF and ATIC from any and all Claims that Intel ever had, now has or hereafter may acquire against AMD, GF and ATIC, whether known or unknown, on account of any action, inaction, matter, thing or event, that occurred or failed to occur at any time in the past, from the beginning of time through and including the Effective Date, including, without limitation, any and all Claims based on or arising out of, in whole or in part, the Actions or the facts underlying the Actions and any claims that could have been raised in the Actions up to the Effective Date. All third parties included within the scope of the preceding release, pursuant to Section 1.4, are expressly agreed to be third-party beneficiaries of this Agreement.
It seems somewhat relevant to today's announcement as it seems to release AMD from litigation for any future joint ventures it might partake in. However I'm not a lawyer and it's entirely possible that I'm miss reading this.
Good info! This seems to confirm what some other sources are saying about the license agreement being null as of last year, and opens the floodgates to this sort of deal, as well as real buyouts of AMD. I'm very surprised this hasn't been more widely reported, though I can see why both parties wouldn't want this to necessarily be in the public eye until it benefited them most. It is also possible I missed the reporting on it when it came out. In any case, thanks!
> on account of any action, inaction, matter, thing or event, that occurred or failed to occur at any time in the past, from the beginning of time through and including the Effective Date
I think this is the key part here - Intel is basically agreeing to never sue about anything that happened through and including the Effective Date but it doesn't say anything about things that happen after the effective date. I really doubt Intel would agree to such a thing.
So unless AMD made the licensing agreement 7 years ago and kept it secret, it wouldn't be covered by that agreement. That would be an interesting fuck-you the next time one of these settlements happen, though.
For reference, here's the full text of the settlement(at least what was filed publicly with the SEC)[1]
It appears during the settlement they made a new patent cross-license agreement, which is not public of course. The new agreement is what is alleged by sources to have expired in 2015, which is what would allow AMD to license their IP to third-parties. It could also be that the patent agreement is more lenient than before, because at the very least it expanded to include at least one third party in the form of GlobalFoundries. If that is the case though, one wonders why this hasn't already happened.
Someone should really work towards making legal document as a testing framework against which user can send a query of an action and the output of query should be if action is allowed by that document or not. :)
It has nothing to do with the ROSS link but it shows just how great Watson could be at most things that involve natural language processing and more or less simple questions that could easily be cited from various sources.
Wouldn't surprise me if you could ask ROSS or any other legal aid based on Watson to go over a contract and ask if I do X what would happen, since it has access to both legislation and case law it might even could present you with a probabilistic outcome based on previous law suits which involved similar contracts and circumstances.
Another follow-up, the actual cross-license agreement is here[1]. From my reading of it, it can expire, among other times, when the last of the patents it covers expires. That implies to me that it is probably still in effect, since any patent covering AMD64 most likely is still valid in 2016. I don't know what or who to believe anymore.
In 2009 AMD divested itself of it's manufacturing arm by spinning it off into GlobalFoundries (GF) which was a joint venture with Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC). Intel sued AMD, GF, and ATIC for violation of the terms of AMD and Intel's prior cross licensing agreements.
Later that year Intel and AMD entered into a Settlement Agreement to halt several on going lawsuits both parties had against each other. The AMD/GF/ATIC lawsuit was one of those that was part of the settlement agreement. Under section 4 of the settlement agreement are the mutual releases each company agreed to. Section 4.2 is Intel's release and it states the following.
4.2 Intel Release. Except for the rights and obligations expressly created or reserved by this Agreement and by the agreements described in Section 3.7, Intel does hereby irrevocably release, acquit and forever discharge AMD, GF and ATIC from any and all Claims that Intel ever had, now has or hereafter may acquire against AMD, GF and ATIC, whether known or unknown, on account of any action, inaction, matter, thing or event, that occurred or failed to occur at any time in the past, from the beginning of time through and including the Effective Date, including, without limitation, any and all Claims based on or arising out of, in whole or in part, the Actions or the facts underlying the Actions and any claims that could have been raised in the Actions up to the Effective Date. All third parties included within the scope of the preceding release, pursuant to Section 1.4, are expressly agreed to be third-party beneficiaries of this Agreement.
It seems somewhat relevant to today's announcement as it seems to release AMD from litigation for any future joint ventures it might partake in. However I'm not a lawyer and it's entirely possible that I'm miss reading this.