The muscular giants of the technology industry often seem to be one step ahead of antitrust regulators, who must rely on century-old laws and slow-moving courts. Technology markets, by contrast, operate according to the hurry-up clock of the Internet age.

The Federal Trade Commission, one of two main agencies that enforce the antitrust laws in the United States, is trying to pick up the pace  and look to the future.

In an unusual complaint filed Wednesday against Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, the F.T.C. said it wanted to address anticompetitive abuses not only in the past and present, but also down the road.

Armed with a hybrid law that spans consumer protection and antitrust concerns, the agency said it was seeking to prevent Intel from using its dominance in the market for microprocessors, the main control chips in personal computers, to squelch competition in video graphics chips. The graphics-chip market is currently quite competitive, with Intel facing off against Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices.