By Kate Yuan

The US chip giant Intel has reached a non-disclosure agreement with the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMECAS) in July, ending all pending litigation about the FinFET patents. Intel revealed this in its the 2nd quarterly financial report.

The patent dispute started in 2018, when the IMECAS accused Intel of infringing its FinFET patents and requested compensation of at least RMB200 million ($27.64 million).

Intel repeatedly filed for patent invalidation in China, as well as in the US for the FinFET patent family, but the results were not satisfactory.

Founded in 1958, Beijing-based IMECAS is one of China’s key microelectronics research institutions and IC business groups. IMECAS has profound strength in the FinFET patents, which is the fundamental reason for Intel’s repeatedly failed invalidation requests, said JW Insights.