June 8, 2026, 21:03 GMT | Insight
VLSI Technology on Friday decried efforts by
Intel Corp., Patent Quality Assurance LLC and the
US Patent and Trademark Office to keep allegations of an Intel-PQA connection under wraps. Their shared resistance to unsealing an anonymous “whistleblower report” should only heighten concerns about the integrity of an inter partes review that wiped out a high-value patent, VLSI said.
In a filing with a US appeals court on Friday, VLSI Technology said opposition to its motion to unseal a document from an anonymous whistleblower “underscores the need for sunlight” on proceedings that resulted in cancellation of a patent that a Texas jury found Intel infringed to the tune of $1.5 billion.
Intel Corp., Patent Quality Assurance LLC, and the US Patent and Trademark Office in recent weeks have each separately argued that what the court referred to as a “whistleblower report” at a May hearing (see
here) should remain out of public view.
According to VLSI, however, that only reinforces questions surrounding the integrity of the
Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s cancellation of its US Patent No.
7,523,373 in an inter partes review, or IPR, initiated by PQA.
“This case is not just a dispute between parties but is about public trust and the integrity of the IPR system,” VLSI CEO Scott Bain told MLex in a statement.
The ‘373 patent, along with US Patent No.
7,725,759, formed the basis of a blockbuster $2.18 billion jury award against Intel in Texas that was later wiped out by the
US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. VLSI acquired both patents from
NXP Semiconductors in 2019.
In their December 2023 holding, the appeals court declared the ‘759 patent noninfringed. They ordered a damages-only retrial for the ‘373 patent, the infringement of which jurors in 2021 said was worth $1.5 billion.
Those proceedings have not yet taken place.
Within weeks of the verdict, PQA and a separate entity, OpenSky Industries, were formed for the apparent sole purpose of petitioning for IPR of both patents. The proceedings were later joined by Intel, who was otherwise statutorily barred from launching its own challenges.
PQA and OpenSky prevailed, with the PTAB reaching the merits despite findings by then-USPTO Director Kathi Vidal that both petitioners engaged in abuse of process, and after a 37-page anonymous report purportedly linking Intel to PQA originally was forwarded to USPTO leadership from the office of US Senator Thom Tillis.
The report from the purported whistleblower was not considered by Vidal or the PTAB, and all references to it have been consistently redacted by the parties and USPTO.
Judges Timothy Dyk, Richard Linn and Jimmie Reyna opened the May 8 oral argument on VLSI’s appeal of the ‘373 patent IPR outcome by lamenting the redactions as a potential hindrance to their ability to decide the case or author an eventual opinion.
Unbeknownst to the panel — or even counsel for VLSI — was that the USPTO, on the eve of the hearing, produced the whistleblower report in redacted form as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made by VLSI some 22 months earlier.
On May 19, the patent owner moved to unseal all references to the report in the parties briefs and appendices (see
here).
The “detailed, damning allegations” contained in what Vidal characterized as an “improper ex parte communication” deserve to be made public, VLSI said, for they support a finding that IPR of the ‘373 patent should have been terminated as a sanction for misconduct.
No other party with connections to the case has joined that call for transparency, however.
Intel told the Federal Circuit on May 27 that the report is “littered with false, malicious statements that might unjustifiably harm Intel’s reputation were they to be made public,” and it argued that revealing more than what was produced in the FOIA risks transforming the court record into a vehicle for “anonymous, scurrilous conspiracy theories.”
The USPTO two days later also opposed broader disclosure, defending Vidal’s decision to restrict access to the document and exclude it from consideration in the IPR proceedings.
The office said public dissemination would encourage others to “inject unsworn allegations into a pending administrative proceeding” — a point Deputy Solicitor Austin Mayron also made at the May 8 hearing. The USPTO chided VLSI for “burden[ing] the Court and the parties with needlessly overbroad motion practice that seeks rehearing of an issue already decided by this Court at oral argument,” when the parties agreed to remove all redactions unrelated to the whistleblower report.
PQA went further, urging the court on May 29 to deny the motion outright and arguing that publication of the “anonymous, unverified submission of unknown provenance” would effectively use the appellate record to spread defamatory allegations. The company, like the USPTO, also challenged VLSI’s repeated characterization of the document as a whistleblower report, noting that its author remains unknown.
Last week, the patent owner said each of those objections should be rejected.
“While the author’s insider status is unknown, the report contains multitudinous facts of an insider nature, which could have been tested had the Director permitted discovery,” VLSI argued in reply.
Its brief goes on to make a case that the public interest in understanding both the allegations and the agency’s response should outweigh any justification for continuing to keep the anonymous allegations a secret.
To that end, although the USPTO was critical of the lack of any corroboration or evidence underpinning the report, VLSI countered that “the public cannot assess the accuracy of that assertion, because the government insists on redacting the extraordinarily detailed factual support the report offers.”
“Any shortage of ‘corroboration’ or ‘evidence’ stems from the Director’s remarkable incuriosity about the report’s allegations — and refusal to allow discovery based on them. Without knowing what the report alleges and what it offers in support, the public cannot assess the propriety of its servant’s actions,” VLSI added.
The USPTO declined to comment. Counsel for Intel and PQA did not respond to a request for comment.
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