* Jury finds guilty of infringing 2 Carnegie Mellon patents
* Damages could be tripled because of willful infringement
* Marvell shares fall as much as 12.8 13 percent
By Jonathan Stempel
Dec 26 (Reuters) – Marvell Technology Group was
found guilty of infringing two patents held by Carnegie Mellon
University and ordered to pay $1.17 billion in damages in a jury
verdict on Wednesday in federal court.
The jury, in the case heard in U.S. District Court in
Pittsburgh, also found that Marvell’s patent infringement was
willful, which could enable the trial judge, Nora Barry Fischer,
to award triple damages.
Shares of Marvell, a maker of chips used in PCs and servers,
fell as much as 12.8 percent.
Marvell was accused of infringing two patents for technology
to increase the accuracy with which hard disk drive circuits
read data from high-speed magnetic disks, according to K&L;
Gates, a law firm representing Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Mellon.
Through its verdict, the jury found that Marvell had sold
billions of chips incorporating the technology without being
licensed to do so, the law firm said in a statement.
The jury verdict followed a month-long trial, according to a
form made public in U.S. District Court for the Western District
of Pennsylvania.
Marvell did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Edward DeFranco, one of its lawyers, did not immediately respond
to a similar request.
In the court case, Marvell argued that it did not infringe
or subjectively intend to infringe Carnegie Mellon patents and
that the patents were invalid.
Marvell is based in Hamilton, Bermuda, and makes controller
chips used for reading and writing data on hard disk drives. The
company counts Western Digital Corp and Seagate
Technology Plc among its largest customers.
K&L; Gates said the patents related to information storage
technology systems and methods developed by Carnegie Mellon
Professor Jose Moura and a doctoral student, Aleksandar Kavcic,
who is now a professor at the University of Hawaii.
In afternoon trading, Marvell shares were 11 percent at
$7.34 on the Nasdaq, after earlier falling as low as $7.19.
The case is Carnegie Mellon University v. Marvell Technology
Group Ltd et al, U.S. District Court, Western District of
Pennsylvania, No. 09-00290.
