After Japan's decision to punish Intel for unfair competition, it's now Europe's turn to accuse the chip maker of infringing the EC Treaty rules on abuse of a dominant position by excluding AMD, from the x86 market. This is obviously music to Henri Richard ears (pictured). AMD's sales and marketing chief expressed yesterday frustrations out of Intel's monopolistic behaviour and the lack of reaction from the media and the US government.

"Overtime, it makes no sense to have large players in any markets, anywhere they are positioned in the value chain, hooked onto Intel drug money", said Henri Richard.

Intel needs AMD around... but on a tight leash

On the US front, Richard expects a trial in the 2009 time frame after all the evidence, and the lost emails (sic!), are gathered. But ultimately, it'll be up to the judge to decide if there's enough evidence to stand a trial and when.

And here are some more interesting quotes from Henri Richard:

"The fact remains that there's an uneven distribution in this industry [...] There's at least room for 2. That balance should be based on the merit of the products, the quality of the customer engagement and the relevance of the solutions for the end users. That's all we're asking."

In a fair game, where the starting line is the same, there's only one guy running on good grass and the other one on broken glass, that's the problem we are facing.

It only takes frankly our competitors' decision to change their behaviour and compete on fair grounds and ultimately the irony of the situation is that they themselves understand that they need AMD around. Because if we were gone they would have a bigger problem to face".