Intergraph Wins Patent Infringement Case Vs Intel

A U.S. District Court judge on Thursday ruled in favor of Huntsville, Ala.-based Intergraph in its patent infringement case against Intel, which now must pay at least $150 million under a previously negotiated settlement.

Intergraph sued Intel in 2001 in Federal court in Texas alleging that Intel’s Itanium infringed on its parallel instruction computing (PIC) technology, which the company said it developed in 1992 when the company’s Advanced Processor Division was designing Intergraph’s next generation C5 Clipper microprocessor. The company says the PIC technology is an essential component of Intel’s IA-64 EPIC (explicitly parallel instruction computing) architecture, which is at the heart of Intel’s Itanium chip.

In issuing his order, Judge T. John Ward of the Eastern District of Texas ruled that Intergraph’s patents are “valid and enforceable” and that Intel’s products “literally infringe” two claims.

Intel now must pay $150 million to Intergraph. Upon payment of the initial $150 million, Intel then has three options: (1) pay an additional $100 million to Intergraph and receive a license to the PIC patents, (2) appeal the District Court decision and, if they lose the appeal, pay Intergraph an additional $100 million, or (3) try to design around the infringement.

Intel does plan to appeal the ruling.

The payment is in addition to $300 million that Intel paid Intergraph under a settlement reached back in April that also called for Intel to license Intergraph’s Clipper technology patents.

Back in 1997, Intergraph alleged in a lawsuit was filed in Federal court in Alabama that Intel’s Pentium family infringed its Clipper patents.

This story corrects an earlier version that was published on Friday, Oct. 11.