Western Digital ordered to pay more than US$315 million for patent infringement

A federal jury in California ordered Western Digital to pay $315.7 million in damages after determining that the company violated SPEX Technologies’ patents and intellectual property. The case was first registered in 2016, reaching its verdict only now.

The patents in question are registered as US6088802A and US6003135A, and both refer to security technologies in communication between devices. According to SPEX’s indictment, WD used its patents in the development of several of its storage products, including the Ultrastar, My Book and My Passport lines.

“The invention allows a peripheral device to communicate with a host computing device to enable one or more security operations to be performed by the peripheral device on data stored within the host device,” one of the filings describes.

Both records are from 1997 and were made by a company called Spyrus. SPEX Technologies purchased the patents a few years ago and, ironically for Western Digital, those same patents expired in 2017. However, as the process began in 2016, it is still valid.

Western Digital intends to appeal

As usually happens in this type of case, Western Digital denies all accusations and announced that it will appeal the jury’s decision. The company will follow the post-trial legal procedures to try to appeal to the last possible instance.

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The company will have to fight this most recent fine at the same time that it is already appealing against another decision, from July this year. Also in California, another jury ruled that WD should compensate MRT for US$262 million for patent infringement.

Adding up the values, we arrive at more than half a billion dollars that Western Digital will incur in losses if it fails to annul any of these decisions.

Source: Reuters
Via: Tom’s Hardware