(Image credit: Intel)

A U.S. appeals court this week reopened VLSI Technology's patent lawsuit against Intel, reports Reuters. The decision reverses an earlier finding of no infringement and sends the dispute back to a jury, which again extends a multi-billion-dollar legal battle between the companies.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit set aside a 2024 decision by Judge Beth Freeman from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, who had concluded that Intel's processors did not violate VLSI's 8,566,836 patent which covers a method for measuring maximum CPU frequency in a multi-core CPU and using that data to decide which core runs which task.

The appellate panel determined that the matter was not suitable for summary judgment and must instead be evaluated by a jury. As a result, the case, originally filed in California in 2017, will return to district court for further proceedings. There is a catch, though. The U.S. appeals court supported the decision of Judge Beth Freeman to exclude VLSI’s damages expert, Dr. Ryan Sullivan, who 'failed to adequately disclose' the method and the company's damages contentions. However, VLSI can still pursue damages via another expert.

The current ruling does not determine liability, but it substantially shifts the case as Intel loses early dismissal, and the dispute returns to a jury. However, it should return with viable infringement arguments, a broader reading of the claims, and that the infringement is made in the United States. Intel has managed to prove that the 'measurement-related limitations were infringed only outside the United States' during testing and packaging, not in the U.S. during manufacturing of actual wafers, a point that VLSI disputes. As a result, Intel has managed to narrow the available damage framework, which is a factor that could be important in later stages.

VLSI has filed multiple lawsuits against Intel in the U.S. courts and other jurisdictions, alleging infringement of 19 patents originally developed by Freescale, NXP, and SigmaTel. The legal battle started around the middle of the previous decade, and so far, some claims have been upheld by various courts, while others have been invalidated. However, the '836 patent originally filed by Freescale has not gotten a lot of publicity.

VLSI is controlled by Fortress Investment Group, which sits at the center of a key legal dispute. Fortress also controls Finjan, which is why Intel claims that a 2012 patent license agreement with Finjan covers these claims, as the deal granted rights to patents held by Finjan and other entities under common ownership (i.e., the agreement with Finjan should extend to VLSI's portfolio). VLSI argues that the agreement with Finjan does not apply to it because the company was established four years after the license was granted, and therefore, it is not bound by its terms.

In 2024, a consortium led by Mubadala Investment Company acquired a controlling interest in Fortress from SoftBank Group.

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