On Feb. 4, a U.S. court of appeals dismissed a jury verdict that Apple and Broadcom needed to compensate the California Institute of Technology for $1.1 billion in damages for Wi-Fi technology patent infringement and ordered a new trial to rejudge the amount of damages.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of The Federal Circuit (C.A.F.C.) said the Los Angeles federal jury's January 2020 ruling on one of the largest patent cases in U.S. history was "not legally valid." But the court also upheld other rulings from the jury that Apple and Broadcom had indeed infringed 2 caltech patents and ordered a retrial of whether they infringed a third patent.
Caltech sued Apple and Broadcom in May 2016, alleging that millions of iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches and other devices using Broadcom chips infringed their data transmission patents. The jury ordered Apple to pay $837.8 million to Caltech and demanded an additional $270.2 million from Broadcom. Apple is a major buyer of Broadcom chips, signing a $15 billion sales deal with Broadcom in January 2020 that will end in 2023. Broadcom estimates that 20% of its revenue comes from Apple.
Caltech's damages model is based on the argument that the school could have simultaneously negotiated licensing with Apple for devices that use Broadcom chips, and with Broadcom for chips it sold to other companies. Circuit Judge Richard Linn rejected the theory. "Broadcom and Apple are independent infringers, and based on this fact alone, Broadcom's chips may be at different parts of the supply chain, but these chips are always unchanged, so we should not legally treat the same chips differently," Linn wrote. ”
Caltech also sued Microsoft, Samsung Electronics, Dell Technologies and Hewlett-Packard for allegedly infringing the same patents. These cases are ongoing.
(Source: CIPMAGAZINE, fine soft intellectual property rights) (source network, infringement must be deleted)