Intel Corp (INTC)

[Heidegger]

"Let us put on our Jerry "hat" for a moment and think like Jerry thinks. Here I have this company that is for my own personal use. I have limited resources and I hate Intel. How can I use my resources to maximize the harm on Intel? I have a 1 in 10 chance of really pulling off Hammer and that will really hurt Intel, but that will take 100% of my resources and if I can't pull it off I'm ..er.. the shareholders are dead. If I have a plan "B" then I can't put all my resources into the only chance I have of really hurting my enemy. Easy decision. Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead..."

Jerry may also not care if AMD sinks...he's been selling off most of his shares (according to Yahoo's "Insider" reports) as he got them. He basically sold a lot of shares when AMD was up around $30 and higher.

The collapse of AMD might be useful for his anti-Intel jihad: he screams to the world that Intel used unfair competition to drive his poor little company out of business. Perhaps he seeks treble damages, or more. (In California a jury just awarded $28 billion to a woman who claimed that she hadn't realized for the past 38 years that smoking was dangerous.)

AMD has been trying hard--according to the reports over the past couple of years--to get the Europeans to sanction Intel. A collapse of AMD would provide Jerry's lawyers with a lot to squeal about.

(Never mind that it was AMD which has failed to deliver on promises, failed to get products out in a timely way. Never mind that it was AMD which chose to go down the "copy exactly" path instead of actually innovating. Never mind that it was AMD which launched the price war when Jerry said he would undercut Intel's price by 25%. It will be the lawyer's job to try to get jurors to accept this "never mind!" shtick.

There's a chance AMD may transition into being a purely paper company, a company based on litigation and fueled by hatred for Intel--completing the "Silicon on Paper" scenario that Paul Engel satirized about a few days ago.

Speculatively, being a company made up only of lawyers could free them up to spend all of their time trying to punish Intel for being successful.

Even more speculatively, they might find many allies, all of the companies which would like the European, Asian, and U.S. courts to somehow break Intel's IP ownership of the x86 family.