A U.S. appeals court on Monday overturned a 2021 patent infringement ruling against Intel that awarded patent holding company VLSI $2.18 billion over multiple patent violations. In a two-part decision, the court reversed a previous verdict that found that Intel violated a frequency management patent, while affirming the violation of a second patent on memory voltage reduction – but sending it back to a lower court on the grounds that the damages were improperly calculated in the original trial, Reuters reports.
Back in 2021, a District Judge in Waco, Texas, awarded VLSI a $2.18 billion patent infringement compensation by Intel. This amount included $1.5 billion for infringing on a patent related to frequency management developed by SigmaTel ('759'), and $675 million for a patent on reducing memory voltage, originally from Freescale ('373'). Intel challenged this ruling, but the attempt was unsuccessful in August 2021. Consequently, Intel sought the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's (PTAB) intervention to invalidate both patents, which PTAB did earlier this year.
