A federal jury in Texas said Tuesday that Intel Corp. must pay $948.8 million (about 6.708 billion yuan) to VLSI Technology LLC for infringing on one of VLSI’s computer chip patents.
VLSI, a patent-holding company that is part of Fortress Investment Group, a private equity firm owned by SoftBank Group, has argued in a six-day trial that Intel’s Cascade Lake and Skylake microprocessors infringe on its patents covering data processing improvements, which VLSI purchased from Dutch chipmaker NXP Semiconductors.
An Intel spokeswoman said the company “strongly opposes” the ruling and plans to appeal, and that the case is “one of many examples of the urgent need for reform of the U.S. patent system.”
Last March, VLSI won a separate trial in Texas over a different chip patent, and Intel was awarded nearly $2.2 billion in damages, which Intel has appealed. And in April, VLSI lost another trial against Intel on a related patent.
A lawyer for VLSI said in the latest trial that Intel’s chips caused “millions of infringements per second,” and the jury awarded the company the full amount of damages it sought. An attorney for Intel said at trial that the company’s engineers developed its innovations independently and that its modern microprocessors would not be used with VLSI’s outdated technology.
Two other patent cases brought by VLSI against Intel are still pending in Northern California and Delaware. The trial in the California case will begin in 2024.
