VLSI, a company created in 2016 by SoftBank’s hedge fund Fortress, hoards patents and seeks patent compensation from major technology companies. Previously, VLSI sued Intel for patent infringement in multiple U.S. states, and last year Intel said it could pay as much as $11 billion if it lost the lawsuit between all states and VLSI.
VLSI and Intel ended their Delaware patent dispute with the former agreeing not to sue Intel’s customers and suppliers over the five CPU patents involved in the case, and the latter also withdrew its counterclaim. Neither party paid the other to terminate the lawsuit. VLSI had sought $4 billion in damages in a Delaware patent dispute.
Over the past period, VLSI and Intel have had many confrontations: in March 2021, A jury in federal court in Waco, Texas, ruled that Intel paid VLSI $2.18 billion in damages for two other patents, one for frequency management of processors (initially developed by SigmaTel) and the other for a method for reducing memory operating voltage (first filed by Freescale), which Ingle ultimately failed to overturn in August 2021, and in April 2021, another jury in the same court ruled that Intel did not infringe two VLSI patents on computer acceleration methods (formerly owned by NXP Semiconductors), thus avoiding a $3 billion damages； In November, Intel lost another lawsuit in Texas to pay VLSI $948.8 million.
However, lately, Intel confirmed in a statement that the Delaware patent dispute is over, though it did not disclose further details.