It appears that Intel has to pay $2.2 billion in damages after a patent trial loss to VLSI, as reported by SeekingAlpha. A federal jury in Waco, Texas ruled that Intel violated two patents of Fortress Investment Group’s VLSI Technology and must pay $2.18B in damages, for violating two of its patents.
VLSI Technology claims in its lawsuit that officials at Intel Corp., pirated technology concepts from two of its patents to benefit its company without properly compensating VLSI.
Damages for one patent violation amounts to $1.5 billion, while the other patent totals $675 million, and the patents are related to data processing system technology that VLSI alleges Intel used in certain processors.
Apart from that, VLSI has sued Intel with six other alleged patent violations, in California, Delaware, Texas, and other states.
Intel and Apple have previously filed an antitrust suit against VLSI where Intel said VLSI was seeking billions in damages across its various patent suits. Attorney Morgan Chu, of Los Angeles, is representing VLSI, and Bill Lee of Boston is representing Intel in the filing.
According to Waco Tribune-Herald, the trial will center around two patents held by VLSI, one that will be referred to as “373,” chips that found a way to save computer power, and a method to reduce the memory’s minimum operating voltage, and “759,” which increased the speed of the CPU (i.e. clock speed management).
VSLI, which stands for Very Large Scale Integration, later merged with a company called NXP, which developed the two patents.
However, the patents originated from Freescale Semiconductor Inc. and SigmaTel Inc., both of which were purchased by NXP Semiconductors afterwards.
“Intel incorporated NXP’s inventions into its own chips and has not paid reasonable royalties for the use of those inventions,” Attorney Morgan Chu said. “That basically is what this case is all about. We are here because the law provides a remedy for patent infringement.”
According to the Waco Tribune Herald report, Bill Lee, Intel’s lead attorney, on the other hand has denied the allegations.
Lee said there was no infringement on either patent and that one of the patents is invalid because the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office failed to detect that the technology in dispute already existed at Intel (when the patent was issued).
He said Intel doesn’t use technology from either of the patents. “It never has, and more importantly, nobody ever has. Intel had a better, more robust design. They are better.”
Intel is seeking help from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to challenge VLSI. It remains to be seen how this matter is settled in the court. According to Intel’s lawyer, VLSI has no products and its only potential revenue is this lawsuit, and the company appears to be a patent troll.
Stay tuned for more tech news!
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Notice that large companies such as Apple and Intel tend to steal technologies, incorporate them in to their products, get sued for this, take it to court and prolong the fight to either bankrupt the other party or pay a measly fine and then continue to use those technologies with no other repercussions and reap billions while doing so.
the deep pockets of capitalism… doing what deep pockets do.
Just another day.
WOW, That’s a lot of damage!!
Should be at least 20 billion, 2 billion is hardly a slap on the wrist of a giant like Intel.
Intel only made 21 billion USD in profit last year. If the 2.18 billion dollar award sticks then the shareholders will definitely feel it and they won’t like it.
Let them eat each other. But, you can bet Intel calculated the potential profit vs. the risk and are still making a boat load of money. Every now and then the piranhas bite each other during as feeding frenzy.
so poket change
WACO judge: Yep, that’s a patent. There’s a lot of technical terms in there so I’m not going to read it and assume your right. Here is your billion dollars. Thx for that “anonymous” donation you gave me btw.
Patent system is fine guys.
VLSI more like 😀
Land of the patent trolls. Aka Apple
When the profit outweighs the penalty, it’s just good business to keep doing illegal s**t.
“American justice” at its finest.
And people don’t even understand this. It reminds me of Microsoft Windows Media player& real player. Even after Microsoft paid them billions in damages the damage to real player was already done. They were done in terms of market share and everything else.
You can violate me for 2.18 BILLION DOLLARS, no problem. ?
This is why Patent Trolls exist. Just look at that paycheck $2.18 billion dollars. Assuming an appeal doesn’t reduce the amount.
Actually schiesterstein and goldberg associates esq. gets most of that money as usual. They also most likely owned the patent shell company too. Of course some went to the judge for his second beach condo and intel now has to cook the books as they say to keep their large investors and juicestreet happy.