Chief Judge Kimberly Moore wrote that the district court erred in interpreting the stipulation, which stated that 70% of Intel products meeting technical requirements "without regard to geographic considerations" would be deemed to have a U.S. nexus under 35 U.S.C. § 271. The court rejected Intel's argument that the stipulation was merely an accounting mechanism for damages, noting that the language explicitly addressed infringement purposes.
The dispute centers on U.S. Patent No. 8,566,836, which covers methods and apparatuses for choosing cores of a multicore processor to execute tasks based on processing speed parameters. VLSI sued Intel in 2017, asserting infringement of claims 1, 9-11, 13, 17, and 20-21 of the patent.
The Federal Circuit also reversed the district court's claim construction of apparatus claim 10, finding that Judge Beth Labson Freeman incorrectly imported an "upon identifying" limitation through prosecution disclaimer. The panel held that the prosecution history statements did not amount to a clear and unmistakable disclaimer requiring identification of a single-core processing task irrespective of when it is done in relation to core selection.
While reversing the summary judgment on infringement, the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court's decision to strike the damages theories of VLSI's expert, Dr. Sullivan. The court found no abuse of discretion in applying Patent Local Rule 3-8, noting that VLSI's damages contentions contained scattered references to Intel data and documents and failed to provide adequate notice of the underlying data.
The case is remanded for further proceedings. VLSI maintains another damages expert, Mr. Chandler, whose theories remain available for trial. The reversal allows VLSI to proceed with its infringement claims against Intel's multicore processor technology under both literal infringement and doctrine of equivalents theories.