According to foreign media reports, a federal jury in Texas, the United States, ruled on Tuesday that Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, infringed two patents owned by minority-owned VLSI Technology, requiring a total of US$2.18 billion in compensation.

The jury ruled that infringement of the two patents required Intel to pay US$1.5 billion and US$675 million, respectively. But Intel denied infringement and stated that one of the patents was invalid because it covered the work done by Intel engineers, but the jury rejected these arguments.

One of the patents was originally issued to Freescale Semiconductor in 2012, and the other was issued to Sigmatel in 2010. Freescale later acquired Sigmatel, but it was acquired by Dutch chip manufacturer NXP (NXP) in 2015. In 2019, the two patents involved in this case were transferred to VLSI.

VLSI's claim is between US$750 million and US$2.2 billion because its attorney said that the above-mentioned patent covers inventions that increase processor power and speed, which is a key issue of competition.

The lawyer also stated that Intel did not pay reasonable royalties because it "integrated NXP's inventions into its own chips." Considering that Intel sells hundreds of millions of chips every year, the amount of compensation is not high. Intel once compensated MicroUnity Systems Engineering for US$300 million in 2005 and US$1.5 billion to Nvidia in 2011, although the settlement of that case involved technology cross-licensing.

Intel argues that VLSI has only been established for four years, without any products, and the only potential income is obtained through litigation, similar to a "patent hooligan." Intel attorneys declared that VLSI "takes out two patents that have not been used for 10 years from the shelf and asks us for $2 billion." (Little)

Source: NetEase Technology Report