Jurors began their deliberations in VLSI v. Intel Tuesday morning in Waco faced with a decision whether to follow the advice by VLSI’s lawyers given in Monday’s closing arguments to award their client billions of dollars or side with Intel that the requested damages are an “outrageous” amount and award VLSI nothing.
“Nobody’s ever paid anything remotely like the amount of money VLSI is seeking … that isn’t the real world,” Intel lawyer Joseph Mueller of WilmerHale told jurors Monday afternoon. “It’s an outrageous demand and it tells you about the character of the case.”
Mueller said that amount was so high that even VLSI’s rebuttal witness testified that he had never seen a licensing agreement comparable to the damages model in the case.
“He couldn’t find one agreement that would be comparable,” Mueller said. “If he had been at the negotiating table he would have said ‘no’ and walked away quickly.”
Intel is accused of willfully infringing on two VLSI patents — the ‘373 patent and ‘759 patent — which are related to the speed and power-saving technology of computer chips. VLSI argues that Intel sold nearly a billion products that infringed on the technology. Intel denies that it infringed on the patents, says its engineers weren’t even aware of their existence and argues that the inventions are not even used by the people who own them.
VLSI lawyer Morgan Chu reminded jurors that a party can legally infringe on a patent without knowing of its existence. He also told the jury that they can find for willful infringement if a party willfully turns a blind eye to a patent, such as a company’s instruction to its employees to not look up certain patents — as VLSI alleges of Intel in this case.
“If, for example, engineers are told, ‘Don’t go looking at patents,’ you can say that what they’ve been told is like an ostrich putting his head in the ground,” said Chu, a partner at Irell & Manella.
Chu never explicitly said aloud during closings that his side was asking the jury to award billions. He only referred to highlighted figures of slides that were presumably being presented to the jury as he delivered his closing argument.
“When you go to the jury room, your verdict can send a message that companies that use the technology of others recognized by the U.S. Patent Office should entitle those patent owners to reasonable royalties,” he said. “Through that, you will be sending a strong signal that you support the innovation economy and are creating the right incentives and set of balances that keep our economy strong.”
Intel lawyer Bill Lee, who also delivered a closing argument, said awarding damages to VLSI would be the opposite of keeping the economy strong, suggesting that the verdict would only support a company that spends all of its money on litigation instead of research and development.
“Intel is here to defend the work of their engineers,” said Lee, a partner at WilmerHale. “They’re here because when their work gets attacked, they defend it. And they’re here because when there are unreasonable claims in a lawsuit in federal court that is seeking unreasonable damages, it’s bad for innovation, bad for the economy and bad for the patent system.”
Throughout the six-day trial, jurors heard from expert witnesses on both sides, which are often the key witnesses in patent infringement cases.
Chu touted the credibility of his side’s witnesses and hammered the credibility of his opponent’s.
“Credibility is so important,” Chu said. “If one side has experts who testify inconsistently with themselves and inconsistently with other fact witnesses, or inconsistently in connection with Intel’s documents, that’s something you can weigh during your deliberations.”
Intel, on the other hand, implied to the jury that the $1 million that VLSI paid its experts labeled them anything but credible and independent.
“These are not independent experts coming to give you their opinion … this is where VLSI has invested its money,” Lee said. “Not in research and development, not in anything else, but in this litigation.”