Intel has acknowledged lapses in its policies to preserve e-mail being sought by AMD, which sued Santa Clara-based Intel in June 2005 for allegedly coercing computer makers, retailers and distributors to buy its chips instead of AMD's.

During a status conference Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Delaware, an attorney for Sunnyvale-based AMD said Intel disclosed in a document that Otellini, Chairman Craig Barrett and Sean Maloney, head of sales and marketing, were "non-compliant" with Intel's own directive for employees to back up their e-mail, according to a transcript released by AMD.

The AMD lawyer, Linda Smith of O'Melveny & Myers, charged that in the document to AMD, Intel said that Otellini thought Intel's technology staff was automatically backing up his e-mail, so he thought he did not have to back up the documents. Intel lawyers did not contradict the statements during the status conference, but company spokesman Chuck Mulloy said Monday that AMD was leveling accusations before Intel had completed its own internal search for the e-mails and before it has determined the causes of the potential losses.

News source: Mercury News