We have already told you that the court dismissed Intel’s case against VIA chipsets for Athlon (see this news story), however, it was unofficial info then. Yesterday VIA made an official press-release about that where they told the public that the court really admitted Intel’s claims to be ungrounded. By the way, as you remember, the whole thing was about the infringement of some Intel’s patents concerning the AGP interface. As the court found out, VIA did really use one of these patents, but absolutely legally. The company received access to this patent when Intel opened AGP 2.0 specs to the industry. As a result, the case is closed: no license or any other fees should be paid and VIA calls back its suits against Intel in return.
Intel also made an official press-release saying similar things, but made in a totally different tone (of course!). And certainly they couldn’t help mentioning that the suits against VIA concerning P4X266 chipsets for Pentium 4 remain valid. It’s a pity. We believe that if the companies managed to agree upon something peacefully, everybody could profit from that, including Intel.