Court Orders Marvell To Pay Carnegie Mellon $1.5B For Patent Infringement 85
Lucas123 writes "A U.S. District Court has ruled that Marvell Technology must pay Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) $1.54B for infringing on two hard drive chip patents. Marvell was also ordered to pay interest at 0.14% annually, and 50 cents for each chip sold that uses the intellectual property. While Marvell did not comment on the case, CMU said it 'understands' that Marvell will again appeal the ruling and the school 'will look forward to the federal circuit court' upholding the lower court's ruling. The latest decision by a U.S. District Court in Western Pennsylvania ends for now a five-year legal battle between the two. In 2012, a jury found Marvell had violated CMU's patents, and the chip maker then appealed that ruling."
Re:1.5 Billion? (Score:4, Informative)
And I'm sure they'll find something to do with it.
Re:Good guys and bad guys (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, they will. CMU's IP Policy [cmu.edu] is quite clear on this matter. The inventors will get 50% of the proceeds.
Re:Isn't that obvious? (Score:5, Informative)
build another admin building with a level opulence that would make a Saudi prince feel like a tent dwelling nomad -- duh. :)
Re:Taxpayer subsidized? (Score:2, Informative)
Calm down, they're a private university. You could've google/wikipedia that before flying off the handle.
Re:0.14% Interest? (Score:4, Informative)
I was also surprised by that, but looks like it's mechanically computed based on T-bill rates. The full opinion is here (pdf) [justia.com].
The opinion cites (on p. 47) 28 U.S. 1961 [cornell.edu], which says:
And the 1-year T-bill rate is indeed somewhere around that [treasury.gov].
Re:1.5 Billion? (Score:5, Informative)
You don't invent patents. You patent inventions. The patents list the inventors. The inventors [names] are ON the patents.
Re:wow (Score:5, Informative)
The size of the award was based on an analysis by Catharine M. Lawton, an intellectual property damages expert who testified on behalf of CMU during the trial along with CMU's technical and industry experts. Ms. Lawton applied several commonly used and court approved methods of determining an appropriate royalty for Marvell's infringement in patent cases. Ms. Lawton's analysis rested on a comparison of Marvell's business and economic circumstances both before and after it started to infringe. Her opinion and application of these accepted methods were based on a detailed analysis of the facts and financial records in the case, as well as the testimony of Dr. Steven McLaughlin, CMU's digital signal processing expert, and Dr. Chris Bajorek, CMU's expert in the hard disk drive industry.
Marvell earned an average revenue of $4.42 per chip and made an average operating profit of $2.16 for each of the more than 2 billion chips sold over more than a decade. Based upon her analysis of all the facts, Ms. Lawton determined that the proper value of the CMU invention was $.50 per chip.
Re:wow (Score:5, Informative)
You should really just read the whole FAQ.
Basically Marvell desperately need the invention after trying and failing to come up with something that could do the same thing. CMU offered to license it to them. They declined, and then used it anyway. It completely turned around their drive business. So, only 25% of the profits for willful infringement of critical technology that they could have licensed for much less if they'd played fair back in the day doesn't really seem too bad to me.