HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- A scant month after settling its patent battle with Digital Equipment Corp., Intel Corp. finds itself embroiled in another major legal row--this time, with x86 workstation vendor Intergraph Corp.

Intergraph fired the first salvo, filing a lengthy lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Alabama, charging Intel with a host of what it termed "anticompetitive practices." Chief among these is an allegation that Intel sought to obtain rights to a series of Intergraph cache-management patents through "coercive tactics," according to the complaint.

Intergraph also alleges that Intel tried to induce Intergraph's customers to buy workstations from other vendors, that Intel didn't provide Intergraph with vital technical information, and that Intel sought to foil Intergraph's efforts to buy debugging hardware from a third-party vendor. Along with a request to bar Intel from the alleged practices, Intergraph said it will be seeking unspecified monetary damages.

For its part, Intel immediately filed a countersuit in U.S. District Court in San Jose, seeking a declaratory judgment that the Intergraph patents are invalid and that Intel is therefore not infringing them.

The legal battle marks a fracture in a long-standing business relationship, which soured markedly over the past year. "I think it's a case of, we thought that Intel was a relationship-type of company," said Wade Patterson, president of Intergraph Computer Systems. "We discovered that that's not the case. Whatever is best for the moment is what they're going to do."

Intel vigorously refuted Intergraph's complaint. "Did we introduce competitors into Intergraph's markets? No, we did not," said an Intel spokesman. "Did we refuse to allow a third-party supplier to release equipment to Intergraph? No, we did not. Have we stopped sharing confidential information with Intergraph? Yes. It's not in our interest to share data with a company we may be involved in litigation with."

Intel also said that, prior to the suits, it had been in discussions with Intergraph for several months on the patent issue. "Intergraph has been asserting these patents elsewhere, causing considerable market confusion," the Intel spokesman charged.

The courtroom donnybrook comes just as Intergraph is gearing up for a major push in the Windows NT workstation world. Intergraph is spinning off its Intergraph Computer Systems unit as a free-standing company, with high hopes that the operation will boost its share of the workstation market in 1998. A host of new-product introductions are planned, and industry observers expect that Intergraph will greatly broaden a product portfolio that currently revolves around a respected line of graphics-enhanced NT systems.

However, Patterson asserted that the row with Intel won't slow Intergraph down. More important, he said that Intergraph's pipeline of leading-edge Pentium II processors, which it needs to build its workstations, are secure. "We have a request [in our suit] that Intel supply us without interruption," he said, adding that Intergraph currently has a written allocation agreement extending through the first quarter of next year.

Intel said it doesn't comment on customer-supply agreements.

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