Intel Corp (INTC)

[Heidegger]

AMD cannot easily transfer their license to make x86 CPUs

"Would anybody buy the AMD processor division? It would probably carry the majority of AMD's debt.
From an Intel shareholder perspective, closing the division would be the best scenario. If they sold it to a stronger company, it would probably be a good for Intel short term (integration problems), it might be worse long term. "


Remember the licensing arrangments with Intel? Remember the outcome of a protracted lawsuit?

AMD has certain negotiated and court-decided rights to certain parts of the x86. Some other companies, like IBM, have similar (but slightly different) manufacturing rights.

Which of these rights are transferrable to NEC or Fujitsu or T.I., as examples, is for lawyers to decide. And some of these rights are transferrable more so when the entire company is sold, some are essentially untransferrable at all.

What is nearly certain to this non-lawyer (me) is that AMD will not be able to just announce that they are selling their x86 design team and x86 product portfolio to a company which has not made licensing arrangments with Intel. (I recollect this being discussed many years ago, during the height of the legal battles with Intel.)

AMD might be able to sell their processor division to IBM, because of IBM's negotiated rights to use x86 designs. Offhand, I can't think of any Japanese, Korean, or Taiwanese company which has negotiated similar licensing arrangments with Intel.

(Note: Certain NEC versions of the 8086, notably the "uPD" (mu), were litigated at the time, the 1980s. The outcome did not license NEC to build later versions. Likewise, Harris CMOS versions did not license Harris or MATRA/Harris to build other than what the license specifically called for. )

Skilled lawyers will know more about the subtleties of these licensing deals. But suffice it to say that it will not be just an accounting issue for AMD to "sell its processor division" to just any old company. New licenses would have be negotiated, and there is zero chance Intel would play ball.

--Tim May