San Francisco: A federal jury in the US has ordered Apple to pay the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) $837 million for infringing on the university’s patents on Wi-Fi data transmission.
Caltech filed a lawsuit nearly four years ago in which it accused Apple and Broadcom of infringing on the university’s four Wi-Fi data transmission patents, The Verge reported on Wednesday.
Agreeing that the two companies did the infringements, a federal jury in California on Wednesday awarded a total of $1.1 billion in damages to Caltech for the infringement, Law360 reported.
While Apple has been asked to pay $837 million, Broadcom owes $270 million, according to the ruling.
The award of damages has been calculated on the basis of an estimate of what Caltech might have gained in royalties had the two companies entered into a deal with the university before they put Broadcom’s Wi-Fi chips into new Apple devices.
According to Joseph J. Mueller of WilmerHale who is a lawyer for Apple and Broadcom, the patents had only been licensed once.
He pointed out that using the patents for Wi-Fi was not in the mind of the technology’s co-inventor, Hui Jin until he heard Broadcom and Apple might be infringing them.
Apple confirmed to The Verge that it plans to appeal.
