Stefan Mileschin

Anti-trust

Intel has filed an antitrust lawsuit against a SoftBank investment company alleging the firm stockpiled patents to hold up technology companies with numerous lawsuits.

The complaint claims that that Fortress Investment, which SoftBank bought in 2017 for $3.3 billion, acquired control of more than 1,000 US technology patents.

Intel said that Fortress and other companies it owns or controls filed lawsuits against the Santa Clara chipmaker claiming that nearly every Intel processor made since 2011 infringed patents the companies had obtained control of from NXP Semiconductors.

“One way in which Fortress has tried to turn around its performance and justify SoftBank’s investment in it is through increased speculation on patent assertions”, the lawsuit said.

“Intel brings this complaint to an end a campaign of anticompetitive patent aggregation by Fortress and a web of (patent assertion entities) that Fortress owns or controls.”

Intel said Fortress’ efforts to gather patents constituted anticompetitive behaviour because it was driven by the idea that its purchases would cost less than what technology companies would pay to avoid lawsuits.

“Fortress’ aggregation is intended for an anticompetitive purpose—to invest in patents at costs lower than the holdup value of the patents”, Intel wrote in its complaint.

https://fudzilla.com/news/49636-intel-takes-on-softbank