Intel hit with $949 mln US verdict in VLSI laptop chip patent trial

A federal jury in Texas on Tuesday stated Intel Corp should pay VLSI Expertise LLC $948.8 million for infringing a VLSI patent for laptop chips.

VLSI, a patent-holding firm affiliated with the SoftBank Group Corp-owned personal fairness agency Fortress Funding Group, argued in the course of the six-day trial that Intel’s Cascade Lake and Skylake microprocessors violated its patent masking enhancements to information processing.

An Intel spokesperson stated the corporate “strongly disagrees” with the decision and plans to attraction, and that the case is “one instance of many who reveals the US patent system is in pressing want of reform.”

VLSI’s legislation agency declined to touch upon the decision.

Final March VLSI gained a virtually $2.2 billion verdict from Intel in a separate Texas trial over completely different chip patents, which Intel has appealed. VLSI misplaced one other associated patent trial towards Intel the next month.

VLSI purchased the patent within the newest trial from Dutch chipmaker NXP Semiconductors NV.

An legal professional for VLSI stated at trial that Intel’s chips trigger “thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of infringements per second.” The jury awarded the corporate the total quantity of damages it requested.

A lawyer for Mountain View, California-based Intel stated in the course of the trial that the corporate’s engineers developed its improvements independently, and that its fashionable microprocessors wouldn’t work with VLSI’s outdated expertise.

Two different patent circumstances introduced by VLSI towards Intel are nonetheless pending in Northern California and Delaware. A trial within the California case is about to start in 2024.