Western Digital could pay up to $262 million for patent misuse

Western Digital is being accused of infringing a patent registered by a German scientist and could pay up to $262 million in damages. The complaint was filed by the firm MR Technologie of Germany in a California court (USA) and the judges confirmed that the use of the patent requires compensation.

The indictment alleges that the corporation used its technology starting in 2018, reducing the areal density of its HDDs on a “large scale” from 300 Gbit/sq to 1,000 Gbit/sq.

However, Western Digital says it will appeal the ruling – insisting that 400 of its researchers invented the technique they used to increase the areal density of their HDDs. It has not been revealed when they will file their appeal and when the judges will review the information they will submit to California.

MR Technologie (MRT) is owned by Dieter Suess, professor and head of the Department of Physics of Functional Materials at the University of Vienna. According to the company, two patents registered in the US are included in the process: number 9,928,864 and 11,138,997.

MRT’s lawyers convinced the court that Western Digital used Suess’s patented technologies to triple the spinning areal density from 2018 to the present day. They argue that without his invention, the company would have failed to compete in the HDD industry.

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Lawsuit for Western Digital

Obviously, Western Digital did not like the process at all, having been accused of infringing the patent and the final amount of $262 million, stating at the end of the court that it “will appeal the verdict as soon as possible” and affirmed that its success, in fact, comes from decades of research and efforts carried out by its great engineering team.

The documents presented by Dieter Suess are extremely technical, but in short they talk about optimizations for the magnetic recording technology that HDDs rely on.

While one of the patents claims “a recordable medium that overcomes the writeability problem of perpendicular recording media” by using a specific multilayer exchange spring recording media coupling, the other one aims to address the “spin orbit torque effect” and optimizations.

Source: Tom’s Hardware