June 21, 2004 – The US Supreme Court has ruled that Intel must submit documents from an earlier US antitrust case for a similar, renewed inquiry by the European Union.

AMD has requested access to hundreds of thousands of pages of documents produced during its defense of a patent infringement lawsuit by Intergraph, for use as evidence to European regulators, according to Reuters. The litigation, spawned in 2002 concerning Intel’s Itanium microprocessors, was settled earlier this year with an Intel payment of $225 million.

The Supreme Court decision counters a federal judge’s ruling that the EU’s investigation was technically not a “proceeding” and did not require Intel to turn over any documents; a US appeals court in San Francisco overturned that ruling. It pointedly states, however, that the law can require legal discovery for a foreign court proceeding, it does not open the door to “provide judicial assistance to foreign or international tribunals,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Earlier this month the EU revealed it had revived its interest in Intel’s European business practices with a new “fact-finding stage,” in response to a renewed complaint by AMD.