New York's Cuomo goes after Intel in a major antitrust suit

New York State Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo filed a massive antitrust lawsuit Wednesday against Intel (INTC), accusing the giant chipmaker of violating state and federal laws by using "bribery and coercion" as well as "illegal threats and collusion" to hurt rivals. In particular, the lawsuit accuses Intel of using its market power to hurt rival AMD (AMD), which has long played in Intel's huge shadow.

Cuomo has accused Intel, whose chips power roughly 80 percent of the PCs and server computers sold every year, of paying IBM (IBM) $130 million to bribe Big Blue to put the brakes on AMD's Opteron chip, as well as threatening to scuttle joint projects with IBM if the computer giant used AMD's chips. Intel could face hundreds of millions in penalties.