Marvell ordered to pay in patent case

— Carnegie Mellon University was awarded $1.17 billion by a federal jury in Pittsburgh last week in a unanimous verdict that found the Marvell Technology Group had sold billions of semiconductors using technology developed at the university without a license.

Carnegie claimed that Marvell had infringed on a pair of patents relating to fundamental technology for increasing the accuracy with which hard drive circuits read data from high speed magnetic disks.

Marvell ships more than 1 billion chips a year to electronics manufacturers.

During the trial, Marvell argued that it had not used the university’s technology and that those patents were invalid because similar systems had been developed elsewhere. A company spokesman said Marvell would seek lower damages from the judge in post-trial hearings, which are scheduled for May, and might appeal the ruling otherwise.

Business, Pages 20 on 12/31/2012

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