Intel 2007 Annual Report Download - page 17

Table of Contents
Acquisitions and Strategic Investments
During 2007, we completed one acquisition qualifying as a business combination. See “Note 12: Acquisitions” in Part II,
Item 8 of this Form 10-K. Also, we made two significant strategic investments that we discuss in Part II, Item 8 of this
Form 10-K. See “Note 19: Ventures”
for information on our investment in IM Flash Singapore, LLP (IMFS), a venture formed
with Micron to manufacture NAND flash memory products, and “Note 7: Investments” for information on our investment in
VMware, Inc.
During the first quarter of 2008, we expect to complete the divestiture of our NOR flash memory assets to Numonyx, and we
expect to receive an ownership interest in the new company. See “Note 13: Divestitures” in Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K.
Intellectual Property and Licensing
Intellectual property rights that apply to our various products and services include patents, copyrights, trade secrets,
trademarks, and maskwork rights. We maintain a program to protect our investment in technology by attempting to ensure
respect for our intellectual property rights. The extent of the legal protection given to different types of intellectual property
rights varies under different countries’ legal systems. We intend to license our intellectual property rights where we can obtain
adequate consideration. See “Competition” in Part I, Item 1 of this Form 10-K; “Legal Proceedings” in Part I, Item 3 of this
Form 10-K; and “Risk Factors” in Part I, Item 1A of this Form 10-K.
We have filed and obtained a number of patents in the U.S. and other countries. While our patents are an important element of
our success, our business as a whole is not significantly dependent on any one patent. We and other companies in the
computing, telecommunications, and related high-technology fields typically apply for and receive, in the aggregate, tens of
thousands of overlapping patents annually in the U.S. and other countries.
We believe that the duration of the applicable patents that we are granted is adequate relative to the expected lives of our
products. Because of the fast pace of innovation and product development, our products are often obsolete before the patents
related to them expire, and sometimes are obsolete before the patents related to them are even granted. As we expand our
product offerings into new industries, we also seek to extend our patent development efforts to patent such product offerings.
Established competitors in existing and new industries, as well as companies that purchase and enforce patents and other
intellectual property, may already have patents covering similar products. There is no assurance that we will be able to obtain
patents covering our own products, or that we will be able to obtain licenses from such companies on favorable terms or at all.
The majority of the software that we distribute, including software embedded in our component- and system-level products, is
entitled to copyright protection.
To distinguish Intel products from our competitors’ products, we have obtained certain trademarks and trade names for our
products, and we maintain cooperative advertising programs with certain customers to promote our brands and to identify
products containing genuine Intel components.
We also protect certain details about our processes, products, and strategies as trade secrets, keeping confidential the
information that we believe provides us with a competitive advantage. We have ongoing programs designed to maintain the
confidentiality of such information.
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