Leading chipmaker asks court to reverse $2.2bn patent loss
The award is one of the largest patent damages awards in US history | Intel argues that VLSI Technology presented an ‘unreliable damages model’.
Intel has asked the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to overturn a $2.18 billion jury verdict for infringing two patents owned by VLSI Technology.
The appeal brief, filed Wednesday, September 14, argued that the jury award “rests upon multiple errors and cannot be sustained” and that VLSI Technology’s case relied on “unsupported infringement theories and outrageous damages claims”
In March 2021, a jury at the US District Court for the Western District of Texas concluded that the chipmaker had infringed two patents covering data processing system technology and owed VLSI Technology $2.18 billion. The award is one of the largest patent damages awards in US history.
VLSI Technology had also accused Intel of being “willfully blind” to the existence of the patents and that it had “deliberately continued to infringe in a wanton, malicious, and egregious manner, with reckless disregard for VLSI’s patent rights”.
However, the jury held that while Intel was liable for the infringement of both patents, Intel had not wilfully infringed.
On appeal against the decision, Intel has claimed that the verdict was “tainted by irrelevant and prejudicial damages evidence that never should have been before the jury”.
According to Intel, on the last day of trial the Texas court allowed VLSITechnology to introduce six prior agreements where Intel had paid amounts ranging from $200 million to $1.5 billion to settle unrelated litigation and to license unrelated patents.
"There was no dispute that these agreements were not comparable to a hypothetical licence to the asserted patents, as VLSI’s own expert admitted. The district court nonetheless allowed VLSI to use the non-comparable agreements to portray Intel as a serial infringer who pays large amounts to license patents in litigation and to urge the jury to award similar amounts here—which is exactly what the jury did,” alleged the brief.
It added that the district had “abandoned its gate-keeping role” by allowing VLSI Technology to present an “unreliable—and exorbitant—damages model” at trial.
Intel has asked the Federal Circuit to reverse the judgment or vacate and remand the decision.
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