Intel continues to be defeated in a legal battle with the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMECAS). Intel recently lost its sixth trial in an attempt to defend its position.
The heart of the problem is Intel's foundational FinFET technology. The company has been using this technology in the production of its processors for 10 years, but the catch is that the above-mentioned institute owns the patent Semiconductor device structure and preparation method thereof and semiconductor fin manufacture method since 2015, which is shortly called the FinFET patent.
And in 2018, the institute sued Intel, alleging patent infringement. Since then, Intel has been trying to challenge the plaintiff's claims, but has lost almost all of the proceedings. The company managed to prove that three points of the patent are invalid, but with respect to the remaining 11, the situation has not changed. The source does not say how many more cases there may be, but the current one is already the sixth lost by Intel. And if the company ultimately fails to defend its position, it faces a fine. True, we are talking about an amount of only $ 31 million, plus legal costs. But the plaintiff also demands a ban on the sale of Intel processors in China, and this is already much more serious. Moreover, over the past three years, the institute has filed two more lawsuits against Intel, already related to MOSFET technology.
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