Intel Loses $2.18 Billion To Patent Troll

The mood at Intel is generally not at its peak and a current court ruling is likely to cause even more bad moods. Because the company is now supposed to pay $ 2.18 billion to a patent troll.

The dispute, which was initiated by a company called VLSI Technology, was heard in a Texas federal court. The company accuses Intel of violating two patents relating to semiconductor manufacturing and has demanded large sums of money as compensation for lost license payments. The court awarded the plaintiff $ 1.5 billion for the first patent, and another $ 675 million in the second case, reports Bloomberg.

The Intel attorneys had previously tried to have the patents generally declared invalid, as they would describe procedures that were devised and used by Intel engineers before the patent rights were registered. Obviously, this was not successful. Finally, Intel tried to at least give the plaintiff less money.

Revision is expected

Because the patents originally belonged to the Dutch semiconductor group NXP. It was believed that this should at least be part of the amount. In the end, this was not up for discussion because NXP had no part in the process at all. Thus, the judgment remains as VLSI had imagined it. However, it can be assumed that Intel will try to challenge the decision.

VLSI is a classic patent troll. The company has only been around for four years and it doesn’t make any products or services. It only administers a few patents and tries to gild them using such processes. “They just took two patents out of the closet that hadn’t been used for ten years and said, ‘We’d like $ 2 billion,'” said Intel attorney William Lee.