Patent Litigation Jackpot:

Marvell Technology Group Limited, the leading producer of Storage, communication products is entangled in a major patent Litigation case against a private Research University, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).

The federal court ordered Marvell to pay $1.5 Billion as enhanced penalties for deliberately infringing Carnegie’s Intellectual Property, the third largest ever in a patent case at the time. This verdict is a big bonanza for CMU and a very intense penalty for the Marvell’s Market.

The technology, relating to improving hard disk data read accuracy at high speeds, was reported to have been used in 2.3 billion chips sold by Marvell between 2003 and 2012.Carnegie, ranked 1^st for graduate studies in computer science 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.

The patents were developed by José Moura, a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering, and Aleksandar Kavcic, a former Ph.D. student now a professor at the University of Hawaii. Their work was supported by Carnegie’s Data Storage Systems Center, a university research organization.

The university said the verdict was a victory for academic research and collaboration and added, “Protection of the discoveries of our faculty and students is very important to us.”

By Akshatha Karthik

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