Chip-making giant Intel Corporation has been fined $2.18 billion by a court in the US for allegedly violating two patents. These patents were held by Dutch semiconductor company VLSI Technology LLC.
Reports suggest that the company is planning to challenge the judgement.
The hefty fine could have serious implications for Intel which is facing tough competitions from companies like AMD and NVIDIA.
An Intel representative said “we will prevail” in an appeal and that it “strongly disagrees with today’s jury verdict.”
A federal jury in Texas found that chip-making giant infringed two patents owned by VLSI Technology. One of the patents, 7,523,373, allows the processor to switch to sleeping mode while it is not in use. The second one, 7,725,759, allows the chip to rapidly switch programmes which further allows it to boost processing speed.
Post the verdict, Professor Mark Lemley of Stanford Law School said in a tweet the award was the “second largest patent verdict ever.”
He dded that “I believe every patent verdict over $1 billion has been overturned or reduced on appeal. We’ll see if this one survives”.
As a part of arguments, Intel’s lawyers argued that both the patents cover technology that have not been used for ten years.
Earlier it requested the postponement of the lawsuit, citing the Covid-19 crisis, but a federal judge rejected the plea.