Intel lost in court to patent troll and now has to pay $949 million for 20-year-old patent

A Texas court forces Intel to pay the patent troll a hefty sum of $948.8 million.

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Intel is being sued by VLSI, a defunct company owned by private equity firm Fortress Investment Group. The reason for the lawsuit was a patent issued nearly 20 years ago that VLSI bought from Dutch chipmaker NXP Semiconductors NV. The patent describes a technology that improves chip design by adding dummy metal lines to interconnect layers to increase metal density.

VLSI representatives assure that Intel has been using this technology in its processors for years up until the Cascade Lake generation in 2019. At the same time, Intel states that it did not use this development at all, and its processors received the technology of its own design.

Intel representatives also stressed that this case is one of many examples showing that the U.S. patent system needs urgent reform. The company strongly disagrees with the verdict and plans to appeal.

By the way, this is not the first (and unlikely to be the last) meeting between Intel and VLSI in court: in March, VLSI won a case against Intel for almost $2.2 billion, and the very next month it lost another patent lawsuit against Intel. Two more lawsuits are also pending.

Source: Reuters