Intel Lawsuits: Raptor Lake, VLSI Patents, and ERISA

Intel is currently defending lawsuits on several fronts: a consumer class action over defective 13th and 14th generation “Raptor Lake” processors, a long-running patent war with VLSI Technology involving more than $3 billion in jury verdicts, a shareholder derivative suit challenging the company’s August 2025 equity deal with the U.S. government, and an ERISA case now before the U.S. Supreme Court. Several older antitrust matters have wound down, but the active docket in mid-2026 is substantial. Here is where the major Intel lawsuits stand.

Raptor Lake Processor Class Action

Owners of Intel’s 13th and 14th generation desktop processors began reporting crashes, random restarts, and permanent chip failures in mid-2024. Intel traced the problem to what it called a “Vmin shift”: voltage spikes that pushed the chip’s minimum operating voltage upward over time, degrading the processor irreversibly. The company pointed to four contributing factors, including motherboards drawing more power than Intel recommended and microcode that raised core voltages higher than necessary during idle or light workloads.¹

Intel released a microcode patch (0x129) in August 2024 and a follow-up (0x12B) aimed at the root cause, and it extended the warranty on affected boxed Core i5, i7, and i9 processors from three to five years.² Intel acknowledged the patch cannot reverse damage already done. Owners of boxed processors can file an RMA directly with Intel; buyers of pre-built systems are directed to the PC manufacturer or retailer.³

The litigation began on November 5, 2024, when Mark Vanvalkenburgh of Orchard Park, New York, filed a proposed class action in federal court in San Jose. He alleged he bought a Core i7-13700K in January 2023 and that Intel’s microcode patches did not fix the instability. The complaint accused Intel of fraud, breach of warranty, and violations of New York consumer protection law, and claimed Intel’s internal pre-launch testing had shown the chips could be unstable.⁴

Related cases were consolidated as In Re Raptor Lake Processor Litigation in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. Kaplan Gore LLP is lead counsel, an amended consolidated complaint has been filed, and no settlement has been reached as of mid-2026.⁵

VLSI Technology Patent War

Intel’s most expensive fight involves VLSI Technology LLC, a patent-holding company that has sued Intel across multiple U.S. courts since 2017 over semiconductor patents. Combined jury verdicts have exceeded $3 billion, though Intel has cut into those awards on appeal.⁶

The $2.18 Billion Texas Verdict

A jury in the Western District of Texas awarded VLSI $2.18 billion in March 2021, split between $1.5 billion for a patent on minimum memory operating voltage and $675 million for a patent on clock speed management. In December 2023, the Federal Circuit affirmed infringement on the first patent but vacated the $1.5 billion damages award and ordered a new damages trial. It reversed the infringement finding on the second patent entirely, erasing the $675 million. The appeals court also let Intel raise a license defense it had previously been blocked from asserting.⁷

The $949 Million Verdict and Third Texas Trial

VLSI won a separate $949 million verdict in a November 2022 Texas trial, which Intel is challenging.⁸ In a third Texas trial in May 2025, a jury sided with Intel on the license defense. Post-trial briefing is complete and the court is working through the license issue.⁹

The California Case, Revived

On a separate track, VLSI sued Intel in the Northern District of California in 2017 over a patent covering core selection in multicore processors. U.S. District Judge Beth Freeman granted Intel summary judgment of noninfringement in 2024. On April 14, 2026, a Federal Circuit panel reversed and sent the case back for a jury trial, finding that a pretrial stipulation establishing a 70% U.S. nexus for infringement undercut the district court’s extraterritoriality analysis.¹⁰

As of September 2025, Intel had accrued a $1.0 billion charge tied to the VLSI litigation overall.⁹

Shareholder Suit Over the U.S. Government Equity Deal

In August 2025, Intel issued roughly 9.9% of its stock to the U.S. government in exchange for the release of $8.9 billion in federal funding: $5.7 billion in previously awarded but unpaid CHIPS Act grants and $3.2 billion from the Secure Enclave program. That supplemented $2.2 billion Intel had already received.¹¹

On March 5, 2026, shareholder Richard Paisner filed a derivative suit in Delaware Chancery Court, Paisner v. Tan (No. 2026-0307), naming Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick as defendants. The complaint called the deal “extortionary,” alleging the board approved an unlawful contract giving the government $11 billion in stock for “no meaningful consideration” under pressure from the Trump administration. Paisner quoted a social media post by President Trump: “I PAID ZERO FOR INTEL, ITS WORTH APPROXIMATELY 11 BILLION DOLLARS.”¹²

The complaint also alleged a conflict of interest involving Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, which advised Intel on the transaction. In March 2025, Skadden had agreed to provide $100 million in pro bono legal services to the Trump administration to avoid an executive order restricting the firm’s federal work.¹³ The suit argued that arrangement compromised Skadden’s ability to give Intel independent advice on a deal with the same administration. Intel had rejected a November 2025 books-and-records demand from Paisner, saying he had not established a credible basis for suspecting mismanagement. The case is in its early stages.¹¹

Securities Fraud Class Action

In re Intel Corp. Securities Litigation (Case No. 3:24-cv-02683) was filed in the Northern District of California in May 2024. It alleged Intel misled investors between January 25 and April 25, 2024, by overstating its internal foundry model’s prospects while concealing significant 2023 operating losses. Named defendants included Intel, then-CEO Pat Gelsinger, and CFO David Zinsner.¹⁴ The court appointed the Intel Investor Group and Byoung Wook Jeon as co-lead plaintiffs in September 2024, with Glancy Prongay & Murray and the Rosen Law Firm as co-lead counsel.¹⁵

On July 23, 2025, Judge Trina L. Thompson granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss all claims with prejudice and denied leave to amend.¹⁶ Plaintiffs have appealed, though no briefing schedule or ruling on the appeal has been publicly reported as of mid-2026.⁹

Anderson v. Intel — ERISA Case at the Supreme Court

In Anderson v. Intel Corp. Investment Policy Committee, participants in Intel’s 401(k) plan alleged the company’s investment committee breached its ERISA fiduciary duties by including nontraditional investments such as hedge funds and private equity in target-date retirement funds. The Ninth Circuit held that plaintiffs must allege a “meaningful benchmark” showing the funds underperformed. On January 16, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve a circuit split on that question. The case is in merits briefing, with the respondents’ brief due July 2, 2026. Oral argument has not been scheduled, and the case has been pushed to the Court’s next term.¹⁷¹⁸

Downfall Vulnerability and EireOg Patent Cases

A consumer class action in the Northern District of California targets the “Downfall” security vulnerability Intel disclosed in August 2023. In August 2025, the court dismissed the nationwide class claims under California law with prejudice but allowed subclass claims under other states’ laws to proceed. Plaintiffs filed a second amended complaint in October 2025 and the case continues.⁹

Since April 2024, EireOg Innovations Ltd. has filed eleven patent infringement complaints in the Eastern and Western Districts of Texas against Intel and customers using Intel or AMD processors, including Amazon Web Services, Cisco, Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Lenovo, and Oracle. Intel is indemnifying these customers on four patents. Trials are scheduled through 2026: Cisco and IBM in February, Lenovo and HPE in March, Dell and Oracle in June, and AWS in December. EireOg moved to dismiss its claims against Acer and HP Inc. without prejudice in September 2025.⁹

Antitrust Matters

Intel’s European antitrust history is largely resolved but not entirely. The European Commission’s original €1.06 billion fine from 2009, imposed for exclusionary rebates to PC manufacturers, was effectively closed in October 2024 when the EU Court of Justice dismissed the Commission’s final appeal of a lower court ruling that had annulled the rebate findings.⁹

A separate €376 million fine, issued by the Commission in September 2023 for related conduct, is still in play. The EU General Court in December 2025 upheld the finding that Intel abused its market power but reduced the fine to €237 million, saying that figure better reflected the gravity and limited scope of the conduct. Both Intel and the Commission may still appeal to the EU Court of Justice.¹⁹

In the United States, the FTC’s 2010 consent order barred Intel from using threats, bundled pricing, or other incentives to exclude competitors, required it to keep hardware interfaces accessible to rival GPU makers for six years, imposed transparency requirements on its compilers, and set up a $10 million reimbursement program for customers harmed by misleading compiler optimization claims.²⁰ Running alongside that, AMD’s private antitrust suit settled in November 2009 for $1.25 billion, with Intel agreeing to stop exclusionary tactics and the two companies entering a five-year patent cross-licensing agreement.²¹

1
CoastIPC. Intel Addresses Raptor Lake Chip Failures
2
Tom’s Hardware. Intel Releases Extended Warranty Details for 13th and 14th Gen Chips
3
Intel. Intel Core 13th and 14th Gen Desktop Processor Extended Warranty
4
Tom’s Hardware. Intel Slapped With Class Action Lawsuit for Raptor Lake CPU Instability Issues
5
Kaplan Gore LLP. Intel 13th and 14th Generation Processor Investigation
6
Law360. VLSI Technology LLC v. Intel Corporation
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U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. VLSI Technology LLC v. Intel Corporation, No. 2022-1906
8
Reuters. US Appeals Court Revives VLSI Lawsuit in $3 Bln Intel Patent Fight
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Intel Corporation. Intel SEC Filing, September 2025
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U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. VLSI Technology LLC v. Intel Corporation, No. 2024-1772
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D&O Diary. Intel Derivative Suit Tests Governance Implications of Government Equity Stakes
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Bloomberg Law. Extortionary Intel Stake Sale to US Must Be Voided, Suit Says
13
CBS News. Law Firm Skadden Cuts $100 Million Pro Bono Deal With Trump to Avoid Executive Order
14
Rosen Law Firm. Intel Corporation Securities Litigation
15
CourtListener. In Re Intel Corp. Securities Litigation Docket
16
Levi & Korsinsky. Northern District of California Dismisses Intel Securities Fraud Claims
17
SCOTUSblog. Anderson v. Intel Corp. Investment Policy Committee
18
Plan Sponsor Council of America. SCOTUS 401(k) Benchmark Case Pushed to 2027
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Reuters. EU Court Cuts Intel’s EU Antitrust Fine
20
Federal Trade Commission. Intel Corporation, FTC Matter No. 061 0247
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AMD. AMD Antitrust Ruling Notice