AMD v. Intel: Will we care?

Think we'll still be paying attention to AMD's antitrust lawsuit against Intel in a couple years? Don't count on it. AMD v. Intel has been manna from heaven for reporters during a slow news week, and one not-quite-disinterested observer is already calling it "the tech story of the year." But hot lawsuit stories tend to cool down in this business. They're just not flashy enough.

Remember SCO v. IBM? Yeah, that lawsuit over whether IBM shoehorned SCO's copyrighted code into Linux is still going, more than two years after the suit was filed. In fact, last Friday the judge made a major ruling that effectively disposed of one of SCO's claims and set a December 22 deadline for SCO to finally and specifically identify what code SCO believes IBM pirated.

SCO's refusal to do that was the source of endless reporting and punditry back when we were all a lot younger. Barrels of ink were spilled on the slightest twitch in this case. But now -- nothing. As of Tuesday evening, none of the big IT trade weeklies have had so much as a news brief about the big ruling on their websites.

Why? Well, there was AMD's lawsuit to cover. And the ruling was issued late on a Friday afternoon before a long holiday weekend. And it came just hours after Microsoft announced it will pay IBM $850 million to settle an antitrust lawsuit that IBM hadn't actually ever filed. It's hard for us to keep track of two IBM lawsuit stories, especially on a Friday afternoon before...well, you get the idea.

Mainly, though, by Tuesday morning, the SCO v. IBM ruling was stale news. And the whole SCO v. IBM lawsuit probably seems ancient to reporters and editors. After more than two years, it's hard to stay interested.

Incidentally, that Friday ruling also set a SCO v. IBM trial date of February 26, 2007 in case there's anything left that hasn't already been dismissed at that point. That's almost exactly four years after the lawsuit was filed.

Remember that when you read that AMD hopes to go to trial against Intel by the end of 2006. And remember that however exciting AMD v Intel may sound now, by then we may have a hard time paying attention.