Posts Tagged: "copyright damages law"

How Will the $2.18 Billion Verdict in VLSI Technologies v. Intel Impact Future Patent Valuations?

VLSI Technology, originally an integrated circuit manufacturer in the 1990s, is today a non-practicing, patent-owning entity, an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group. VLSI no longer makes or sells any products, but in 2019 it became the owner of U.S. Patent Nos. 7,523,373 and 7,725,759. Each of these patents relates to increasing the power and speed of computer processors. VLSI sued Intel, claiming that almost 1 billion microchips sold by Intel infringed VLSI’s patents. The jury ultimately agreed, entering a verdict of $2.18 billion dollars for VLSI. In simple terms, this amounted to an award of approximately $2 per chip (on a chip that likely is sold for $200 or less per chip based on third-party estimates).

Christopher Scharff & Henry Kaskov

April 22, 2021

How Not to Copy: What is Fair and What is Fair Use?

These issues of fairness and fair use are played out in the recent Oracle v. Google decision. In a convoluted case that has gone up to the Supreme Court once and will again, the Federal Circuit finally was able to make a ruling that the blatant, verbatim copying of computer code is not a fair use. At issue were the copying of 37 Oracle programs or apps, constituting over 11,500 lines of code, by Google for their use in the Android operating system for smart phones and other uses… In the Federal Circuit’s final analysis of the four factors, they again noted that Google could have written their own code or properly licensed with Oracle, but instead chose to copy. “There is nothing fair about taking a copyrighted work verbatim and using it for the same purpose and function as the original in a competing platform.” Accordingly, the Federal Circuit held that Google’s use of the Oracle code was not a fair use.

Raymond Van Dyke

April 5, 2018