Intel granted appeal of Intergraph Itanium case

 A federal appeals court Thursday vacated a lower court’s decision that Intel Corp.’s Itanium processor infringes upon patents held by Intergraph Corp. The case now goes back to the lower court for further examination.

The case revolves around patents that Intergraph holds related to parallel processing techniques. Intergraph sued Intel in 2001 claiming that Itanium infringes on two patents that specify a combination of hardware-based and software-based techniques for parallel instruction computing.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas agreed with Intergraph in 2002, labeling Intergraph’s patents “valid and enforceable” and finding that Itanium “literally infringes” upon those patents. Intel appealed that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in 2002 after failing to persuade Texas Judge T. John Ward to reconsider his decision.

In its appeal, Intel argued that the lower court had misinterpreted a number of terms related to devices within microprocessors, including “pipeline identifier” and “crossbar,” as they were stated in Intergraph’s patents. Prior to the trial in June 2002, the judge read the applicable patents in what is called a Markman hearing, and defined those patents as they apply to the issues in the case.

On Thursday, the Court of Appeals decided that the lower court had incorrectly defined the pipeline identifier and vacated its judgment.

A pipeline is a sequence of stages through which instructions are processed, and input turned to output. Most chips, including Itanium, have multiple pipelines that perform different operations and therefore need some sort of system for determining which instructions are sent to which pipeline.

The lower court defined a pipeline identifier as “a designation indicative of a processing pipeline,” according to a copy of the appeals court’s decision. This meant, in the lower court’s opinion, that a pipeline identifier does not need to specify which pipeline an instruction will be sent through, only the type of pipeline that must receive a certain instruction.

For example, floating-point instructions would need to be sent down floating-point pipelines, but not necessarily down floating-point pipeline A or floating-point pipeline B.

Intel disagreed, arguing to the appeals court that a pipeline identifier as defined in Intergraph’s patents must specifically indicate which exact pipeline will execute a certain instruction. Itanium does not have devices that identify the exact pipeline for a given instruction, and therefore could not infringe upon a patent that covered a device that selects a specific pipeline, Intel said in its appeal.

The federal appeals court agreed with Intel’s definition of pipeline identifier, and the case now returns to the Texas court to determine if Itanium infringes on Intergraph’s patents under the new definition.

Intel and Intergraph had entered into an settlement agreement prior to the original trial designed to cap potential damages. When Intergraph prevailed in the lower court, Intel agreed to pay Intergraph US$150 million and to do one of three things to stay an injunction against the Itanium processor. Intel could appeal the decision, pay Intergraph an additional $100 million to license the patented technology, or redesign the Itanium processors.

Because the appeals court did not dismiss the case entirely, it’s too early to know exactly what will happen with the settlement agreement, said Chuck Mulloy, an Intel spokesman. Intel will continue to evaluate the case as the lower court moves forward, he said.

Intergraph’s attorneys are also reviewing the decision, a company spokesman said.

The Intel decision does not have any effect on a separate lawsuit related to different patents that Intergraph filed against Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc., and Gateway Inc. in 2002, Intergraph said in a statement Thursday.