Intel sues Softbank-backed Fortress Investment accusing it of patent trolling

Fortress was acquired by SoftBank Group in 2017 for $3.3 bn

Intel has accused a Softbank-backed investment company of being behind a wave of semiconductor industry patent trolling.

In a lawsuit filed this week, it accuses Fortress Investment Group of building up a 'patents bank' and interfering with manufacturing firms' product plans via lawsuits.

The chipmaker claims that Fortress and the other companies it controls have used patents acquired from NXP Semiconductors to file a series of legal cases against Intel, claiming that nearly every processor launched by Intel since 2011 have infringed the patents acquired by Fortress.

"Intel brings this complaint to end a campaign of anti-competitive patent aggregation by Fortress and a web of patent assertion entities that Fortress owns or controls," Intel said in its lawsuit.

The case was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose on Monday.

In its complaint, Intel stated that the private equity firm Fortress had acquired control of more than 1,000 technology patents from US companies. It argued that Fortress' behaviour was anti-competitive as it was driven by the idea that the cost to purchase the patents would be much less than the amount manufacturing firms would have to pay to Fortress to avoid patent infringement lawsuits.

The chipmaker also claimed that Fortress invests in the entities on "terms so severe that the PAEs [patent assertion entities] have no choice but to make aggressive and reckless patent assertions to attempt to generate the revenue required to meet their obligations."

According to Intel, Fortress' act is driven by an urge to justify Softbank's investment in it.

In a statement, Fortress managing director Gordon E. Runté told Bloomberg Law that the firm is confident in its business practices and legal position and views the lawsuit as meritless.

Runté also said that they don't comment on the specifics of litigation matters.

Fortress Investment Group was founded in 1998 and claimed to have $36.1 billion in assets under management as of 30^th September 2017. In December 2017, it was acquired by Japan's SoftBank Group for $3.3 billion.

Softbank also owns British semiconductor designer Arm Holdings, whose technology is attracting new customers in key Intel markets, such as PCs and data centres.