Published in PC Hardware

Intel wins patent case

by on12 May 2017


That is two billion it does not have to spend


Chipzilla has seen off a patent case which would have forced it to pay $2 billion to AVM Technologies.

AVM Technologies holds US patent 5,859,547 and it sued Intel back in 2010 claiming that the Intel Pentium 4 and Core 2 designs infringed its intellectual property. The case was thrown out because there was not enough evidence.

In January 2015, AVM refiled, claiming that Intel was continuing to infringe the patent in its Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and Haswell designs.

Now after a six day jury trial the case was again thrown out, for the same reasons.

The co-inventor of the patent, Joseph Tran, is president of AVM. His earlier company, Translogic, had licensed several of its patents to Intel, but not the '547 patent.

In 2006, when he found an article that described technology very similar to his patent, he contacted Intel and had a number of licensing discussions.

However, Intel refused to license it because it said Tran was not able to show which Intel product specifically infringed the patent. Tran claims he did not have the money to afford the "extremely expensive infringement analyses demanded by Intel".

The case looked like it might go Tran’s way earlier this year when a judge refused Intel's motion to dismiss the entire case for being overly broad.

Last modified on 12 May 2017
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