The Appeals Court ruled that Intergraph had not shown a substantial likelihood of success in its antitrust lawsuit against Intel. A federal trial judge earlier had found that Intel was a monopolist, and that Intergraph had the right to receive advance product information and samples of upcoming microprocessors.

Intergraph sued Intel in November 1997 for patent infringement, illegal coercive behavior, and antitrust violations. Chief among these was 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 alleged 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 was seeking unspecified monetary damages.

Following the ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit here, Intergraph issued a statement that, "While the preliminary injunction, which was overturned today, was critical to Intergraph prior to Intel's signing the FTC consent decree earlier this year, Intergraph does not anticipate that today's ruling will impact its ongoing hardware business."

The company said the decision only affects the injunction and the antitrust portion of its suit. A torts argument and a patent infringement allegation are pending. The company is also appealing last month's ruling that found Intel had acquired access to Intergraph's Clipper microprocessor patents through legal means.

Intergraph has struggled on a variety of fronts this year and has begun focusing its business, selling its ANAtech scanner division to Colortrac Inc. and just this week selling its Veribest EDA subsidiary to Mentor Graphics.