A federal jury on Wednesday found that Marvell Technology Group infringed two patents held by Carnegie Mellon University, and ordered the chipmaker to pay $1.17 billion in damages.<\/p>\n
The award is one of the largest by a jury in a U.S. patent case, and is nearly twice Marvell’s profit in its latest fiscal year. It followed a month-long trial in the U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh, the home of Carnegie Mellon.<\/p>\n
Jurors also found that Marvell’s patent infringement was willful. This could enable the trial judge, Nora Barry Fischer, to award triple damages, a sum close to the $3.96 billion market value of Marvell, whose chips are used for reading and writing data on hard disk drives.<\/p>\n
Shares of Marvell fell 10.3 percent on Wednesday, closing down 85 cents at $7.40 on the Nasdaq.<\/p>\n
Carnegie Mellon said it was gratified by the verdict. “Protection of the discoveries of our faculty and students is very important to us,” it said.<\/p>\n
Marvell and its law firm, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
The company had argued that it had acted in good faith, and the Carnegie Mellon patents were invalid. In a November 29 regulatory filing, Marvell said it intended to litigate vigorously in any potential appeal if it lost at trial.<\/p>\n
Carnegie Mellon had accused Marvell of infringing patents used in technology for hard disk drive circuits to read data from high-speed magnetic disks, according to a statement from the university’s law firm, K&L Gates.<\/p>\n
The law firm said the patents related to systems and methods developed by Carnegie Mellon Professor Jose Moura and a doctoral student, Aleksandar Kavcic, who is now a professor at the University of Hawaii.<\/p>\n
Through its verdict, the jury found that Marvell had sold billions of chips incorporating the technology without being licensed to do so, K&L Gates said.<\/p>\n
Marvell is based in Hamilton, Bermuda. Its U.S. operating unit Marvell Semiconductor Inc is based in Santa Clara, California, and was also a defendant in the case.<\/p>\n
The company posted a $615.1 million profit on net revenue of $3.39 billion in its most recent fiscal year, which ended on January 28. It counts Western Digital Corp and Seagate Technology Plc among its largest customers.<\/p>\n
The trial judge set a May 1, 2013, hearing to consider a final judgment in the case, court records show.<\/p>\n
The case is Carnegie Mellon University v. Marvell Technology Group Ltd et al, U.S. District Court, Western District of Pennsylvania, No. 09-00290.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Nate Raymond in New York and Himank Sharma in Bangalore; Editing by Steve Orlofsky, Leslie Adler, Andrew Hay and Phil Berlowitz)<\/p>\n
Apple infringed three patents \u2013 jury<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n