Last week, we heard in the computer processor market, AMD sued Intel for some antitrust offences. In the same week, in software market, there was a settlement done between IBM and Microsoft for 1990s antitrust case.

IBM Corp. announced on Friday, July 1, 2005, that they will get USD$775 million in cash and USD$75 million worth of software from Microsoft Corp. to settle claims still lingering from the federal government’s antitrust case against Microsoft in the 1990s. The USD$775 million payment will be included in IBM’s second-quarter earnings, which are due to be released in two weeks.

The payout is believed to be one of the largest that Microsoft has made to settle an antitrust-related case. And it brings the software giant closer to putting behind it claims involving technologies long since eclipsed.

One of the antitrust offences Microsoft did was to let other PC companies pre-install the operating system on new computers that could go on sale months before Windows 95 came out. But IBM got its license only 15 minutes before the event. As a result, many customers eager to use the latest software opted for machines made by IBM’s rivals. Since Windows 95 arrived in August, IBM missed out on back-to-school sales and lost substantial revenue.

IBM didn’t sue Microsoft over the findings immediately, but kept the right to do so under a 2003 agreement between the them. Similar talks led to a USD$150 million settlement with Gateway Inc. in April too. Separately, Microsoft has spent more than $3 billion in recent years settling lawsuits by rivals, including a USD$1.6 billion deal with Sun Microsystems Inc. in 2004 and a USD$750 million truce with America Online, part of Time Warner Inc., in 2003. Anyway, apart from these settled cases, Microsoft still faces other legal challenges, including a lawsuit by RealNetworks Inc. and an appeal of a USD$600 million antitrust ruling against it by European regulators. Though software maker Novell Inc. reached a USD$536 million settlement with Microsoft in November, Novell got a judge’s approval last month to proceed with a separate antitrust suit over the WordPerfect word-processing program.

Microsoft has spent more than $3 billion in recent years to settle all the antitrust cases, I am just wondering how much will Intel have to pay if they are found guilty in the latest AMD antitrust complaint. :-?