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Texas court orders Intel to pay $2.18 billion for two patent infringements
The two patents are owned by VLSI and relate to ways to manage CPU clock speeds and minimum voltages for memory. VLSI has an additional six patent violation claims against Intel, which could amount to $11 billion in damages. Intel denies all allegations and is confident it can avoid these fees through future appeals.
[...] Waco Tribune-Herald and Tom's Hardware note that one of the patents (759) relates to clock speed management and is supposed to represent $1.5 billion in damages, while the other one (373) describes a method to reduce the minimum voltage for memory and totals just $675 million in damages. The other six patent violations are supposed to amount to $7.1 billion, and Intel must also consider future royalties, attorney's fees, interests, procedure costs etc., which could amount to $1.7 billion if VLSI manages to win the entire case.
Another Texas jury weighing in on patents.
Also at Wccftech.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 03 2021, @10:34PM (1 child)
America is falling behind the rest of the world in the semiconductor industry.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday March 04 2021, @05:05PM
But on a more upbeat note, America is leading the world in Intellectual Property litigation.
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 03 2021, @10:52PM (8 children)
Another reason to get rid of them, the East Texas kangaroo court
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 03 2021, @10:55PM (2 children)
The whole concept of venue shopping is ridiculous.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday March 04 2021, @12:13AM (1 child)
I thought that venue shopping, especially in East Texas had been addressed. Apparently, the ruling against venue shopping was less effective than we had hoped.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/05/supreme-court-makes-it-much-harder-for-patent-trolls-to-sue-in-east-texas/ [arstechnica.com]
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/patent-cases-in-east-texas-plunge-more-than-60-percent/ [arstechnica.com]
https://www.dallasnews.com/business/technology/2017/05/23/how-patent-suits-shaped-a-small-east-texas-town-before-supreme-court-s-ruling/ [dallasnews.com]
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170522/10263437420/sorry-east-texas-supreme-court-slams-door-patent-jurisdiction-shopping.shtml [techdirt.com]
There are loopholes, I'm sure. Texas Instruments isn't the only tech company with headquarters in or near Dallas, or northeast Texas. Some companies have legitimate reason to file in East Texas. And, I suppose a patent troll with offices in East Texas will take advantage of that.
One thing that I find mildly surprising, is that this suit was in Waco, rather than Marshall. When I read the title, I just assumed that the same cast of characters from Marshall were involved.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 04 2021, @12:26AM
Nice post. Thanks.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 03 2021, @10:59PM (4 children)
As a non-USAian, why does the central govt in Washington or the Supreme Court put an end to patent trolls?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 03 2021, @11:11PM (1 child)
I'm thinking, perhaps there should be some fine that a specific court has to pay or some disincentive to any specific court that tends to rule incorrectly on a given matter multiple times.
For instance East Texas tends to attract patent trolls because their courts tend to rule in their favor. The thing is the federal district courts are supposed to rule on federal law correctly the first time around to minimize the burden on the appellate process and the parties involved (the defendants and plaintiffs). So if a specific lower court consistently rules incorrectly on an issue they create burden on everyone. Perhaps there needs to be some sort of disincentive structure, levied against the lower courts and sanctioned by the higher courts, in place to prevent lower courts from repeatedly ruling incorrectly on an issue and placing undue burden on everyone. If they rule incorrectly once or twice on an issue no big deal. If it's a repeat problem over and over and over on the same exact issue and it's something they obviously should know better after so many times that's when sanctions against a court should be considered.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 03 2021, @11:22PM
(well, the real issue here, technically, is that the USPTO grants a lot of patents that they probably shouldn't grant. Patents are presumed valid if granted so the court just sees, yes, the USPTO granted the patent and so it's valid. What needs to really be looked at here is the patents that the USPTO are granting and why many of their patents were granted to begin with. Of course this has also been discussed so many times and is also redundant like pretty much all of these discussions. Perhaps there needs to be some sort of disincentive structure levied against the USPTO if they are found to have granted a bad patent).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday March 04 2021, @05:09PM (1 child)
I remember soon after Obama was in office, in one of his state of the union messages, he bragged about how the USPTO was granting more patents than ever and how that was a sign of innovation.
Free clue: patents hinder innovation. That is why they are for limited times. Patents should be for something that actually merits such protection.
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 04 2021, @08:06PM
Well I guess this gets into the difference between invention and innovation.
(Score: 5, Informative) by sjames on Wednesday March 03 2021, @11:43PM (1 child)
Note that the plaintiff VLSI is NOT the VLSI we may all remember that used to make chips. They were formed 4 years ago and have no real assets other than a treasure chest of dusty patents and a significant pool of lawyers.
I cannot prove it, but it looks very much lite the entity exists so NXP can keep the patent trolling and potential legal blowback at arms length.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 04 2021, @12:43AM
Now this is the type of info that should be the summary.
Guess the old VLSI got swallowed up by others?
Mod the parent up.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Tork on Thursday March 04 2021, @03:33AM
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩