Intel and VLSI have been battling for years over alleged patent infringement. While most thought that VLSI would get its way and Intel would be forced to pay billions in damages, the tide seems to be turning in Intel's favor.

VLSI owns a number of patents, but two in particular, Nos. 7,523,373 and 7,725,759, one of the major ongoing legal disputes with Intel, relate to processor speed and power consumption. The former is entitled "Minimum Memory Operating Voltage Technique" and the latter is entitled "System and Method for Managing Clock Speeds in Electronic Devices." These are purportedly related to the operation of Intel's latest processors.

In March 2009, VLSI prevailed against Intel in Texas for infringement of these two patents, and a jury awarded VLSI a massive $2.18 billion in damages. The breakdown by patent is $675 million for patents ending in '759 and $1.5 billion for patents ending in '373.

Intel's lawyers have since fought tooth and nail to overturn the ruling and avoid paying the huge damages.

In September 2021, Intel tried to have the case dismissed, alleging fraud over the jury's Facebook postings, but was denied. Then in December 2021, Intel tried to force the judge to overturn the verdict and start a new trial, but was again denied.

A year later, in December 2022, Intel and VLSI decided to stay another patent dispute, this time in Delaware. This one covered five patents and sought up to $4.1B in damages, but neither side reportedly paid the other to end the dispute, and it must have seemed like a stalemate not worth fighting for both sides.

Above: a general timeline of litigation, counterclaims, and decisions along the way between VLSI, Intel, and related parties.

However, just one month earlier, in November 2022, Intel was ordered to pay another $948 million in the same Texas court as the March 2021 trial in which it lost against VLSI over another chip patent, 7,606,983, with Judge Alan D. Albright presiding. Intel was ordered to pay $948 million. Intel at least prevailed against VLSI in this same court in April 2021, costing Intel billions of dollars.

Intel then thought it might have finally found the Texas original litigation kill it had been searching for all along: it filed an appeal against VLSI's patents with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Board of Appeals (PTAB). Unfortunately, it was rejected due to a legal dispute between the two companies in Texas.

Intel then attempted to file a motion to oppose the rule staying the appeal due to an ongoing legal dispute, which was also denied.

Here's where it gets a little absurd, because patent law is incredibly dense, but Intel was allowed to join two separate motions against VLSI patents filed by other companies: OpenSky Industries and Patent Quality Assurance LLC (PQA).

OpenSky Industries and PQA, both completely unknown, were allowed to file copycat appeals with the PTAB against VLSI; PTO Director Kathi Vidal found that both OpenSky and PQA had abused the PTAB review process in an attempt to extort money from Intel and VLSI. ruled that they abused the PTAB's review process. [On October 4, 2022, I found that Petitioner OpenSky Industries, LLC ("OpenSky") filed an IPR to extract payment from patentee VLSI Technology LLC ("VLSI") and Petitioner Intel Corporation ("Intel") and entered a Director's Review Decision finding that it abused the inter partes review ("IPR") process by expressing a willingness to abuse the process to extract payment," Vidal stated in his Director's Review [pdf]. at

A very similar review was raised for the PQA.

Vidal ultimately removed them both from the proceedings, but he elevated Intel's position by claiming that Intel was not involved in any wrongdoing.

"I sanctioned OpenSky, prohibited OpenSky from actively participating in the underlying litigation, and temporarily elevated Intel...Intel has properly participated in the underlying litigation since 2012 during the one-month grace period after the commencement of the underlying litigation, as permitted by our rules, and the statute of limitations has not run. The statute of limitations has not run since 2012.

This meant that Intel now had two appeals against VLSI that had previously been dismissed, and it took the lead on both of them; VLSI was not happy with this situation, but its objections were not frustrated; OpenSky and PQA ended up re-filing both appeals. The two parties eventually decided to re-file the lawsuit.

And, wildly, it worked.

Last month, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Board of Appeals ruled in favor of Intel and OpenSky's suit, invalidating VLSI's '759 patent.

And earlier this week, a U.S. Patent Office tribunal ruled in favor of Intel and Patent Quality Assurance, invalidating the '373 patent.

In a statement to Bloomberg Law, Intel said, "VLSI is a shell company that exploits the patent system to extract billions of dollars from Intel, a US manufacturer and innovator."

VLSI was not the original owner of the two patents at issue in the March 2021 lawsuit, but a long chain of acquisitions and spin-offs put them in its hands and led it to fight Intel. The patents were originally owned by Sigmatel, but ended up in the hands of NXP Semiconductors, a spin-off from Philips; VLSI was once a major manufacturer of early ARM chips, but now NXP and SoftBank-owned private equity firm It is merely a patent holding company established by Fortress Investment Group, a private equity firm owned by NXP and SoftBank.

When the lawsuit first came to light, Intel's attorney, William Lee of WilmerHale, stated that VLSI did not manufacture or sell any products and no longer had any source of revenue beyond this litigation.

"[VLSI] took two patents off the shelf that had been unused for 10 years and said, 'I want $2 billion,'" Lee said in 2021.

What is important to know is that before this happened, both Intel and Apple teamed up to file an antitrust suit against Fortress for the way it was using and operating its patents against both companies. However, the lawsuit failed.

For now, Intel has the upper hand in one of the larger legacies with Fortress through VLSI. But how long will it last?" According to a report by Bloomberg Law, lawyers are already anticipating that the case will be taken to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which means that another lengthy legal process lies ahead.

Oh, and VLSI is also suing Intel in California. That trial is scheduled to begin next year.