While the ongoing antitrust battle being waged in Europe between chip giants Intel and AMD is fresh and memorable, few recall that a similar battle has been unfolding in a US District Court in Delaware since 2005. The case has remained quiet for years as the two parties glacially worked their angles, but the action heated up yesterday when both firms filed to sanction the other.

Both motions accuse the other of faulty data retention practices which have lead to a destruction of evidence.

AMD’s position (PDF)

“Intel could have easily avoided this evidence preservation fiasco, had it and its counsel exercised a modicum of diligence in designing and implementing an effective document preservation program,” their filing reads.

The “fiasco” AMD references is later specified as, “Intel’s much-heralded, high-vaunted, but ultimately unsuccessful, attempt at remediation.”

AMD continues: “At the heart of Intel’s preservation problems was its failure to disarm an aggressive auto-delete system, despite uncontroverted authority required it do so…It’s auto-delete shredder continued to run without any safety net.”

“In sum, Intel’s feckless attempts at preservation have left AMD without the benefit of at least hundreds of thousands and probably over a million relevant documents with which to prosecute its case,” they conclude. “How many exactly were permanently lost, AMD will never know.”

AMD has asked the judge to order the jury to assume that the destroyed documents were favorable to AMD. They further request that Intel be on the hook for the fees necessary to confirm and execute their motion.

Intel’s position (PDF)

Intel’s motion alleges that AMD exaggerated its document preservation efforts in bringing a suit against Intel, saying, “AMD misrepresented its efforts and tried to hide its failures from the court and Intel.”

“Ever since Intel disclosed its problems in 2007, AMD claimed to have an ‘exemplary’ scheme to retain documents in this case. It is now clear that AMD did not, and that some AMD executives and employees failed to retain thousands of documents and e-mails,” claims Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy.

The motion continues: “At least by January of 2005, AMD reasonably anticipated its lawsuit against Intel and did everything a future plaintiff would to do to prepare for that case…But (it) did not start retaining relevant documents, the one thing the law obligated it to do.”

“It is now clear that AMD’s exemplary preservation program suffered from myriad problems,” Intel writes. “These problems had to be dragged out of AMD, usually only after a Court order. At the end of this long and expensive process, it turns out that AMD’s efforts were far from exemplary — rather, they were flawed and incomplete and resulted in massive data loss.”

Intel has asked the judge to sanction AMD for these alleged failures, and to order AMD into producing “responsive, unique, non-privileged documents” within sixty days of the order. Intel has also requested that AMD be ordered to produce a written summary of the efforts taken to recover the documents.

Final thoughts

Now just where have we seen this squabbling before? Ah, yes…