Intel to Pay US$ 2.18 Billion as a Patent Penalty

Mar, 2021 - By SMI

Recently, a case was fought between two companies Intel and VLSI LLC regarding patents in which the VLSI LLC won and Intel was forced to pay a fine of US$ 2.18 billion.

After losing a case regarding more than two years old patents, Intel was forced to pay US$ 2.18 billion. Intel violated the patents related to clock frequencies and voltage held by VLSI LLC, according to the jury. Whereas, Intel disagrees with the verdict of the jury and passed a statement saying they will appeal to the higher authorities and they will get the verdict in their favor, as Intel strongly believe that they have done nothing wrong. On the other hand, the company owner of the VLSC LLC Company is happy that the jury has recognized the efforts taken by the company to innovate and gave the verdict in their favor as they had obtained the patents with their hard work.

The patents, which date from the year 2010 to 2012, have passed through many hands over the years. They were first offered to Freescale Semiconductor and SigmaTel, but FreeScale later bought SigmaTel, and NXP Semiconductors finally took the patent ownership in 2015. VLSI was a registered semiconductor firm that began operations in 1979 and was a founding partner in ARM Ltd. Philips acquired it for US$ 1 billion in 1999, and parts of it are being used by Philips spin-off NXP currently. VLSI LLC, on the other hand, launched in 2016 and regained ownership of the two patents. Intel counsel William Lee, argued that the company has no inventory for sales in the market and that the litigation is the only source of income. He also stated that VLSI LLC took the ownership of two patents that were lying around for two years and according to him it is not a fair deal. The case was fought in the court of the Western District of Texas and the by a judge who was a former patent legalizer.