From ComputerWorld: Chip company Marvell Technology Group has settled with Carnegie Mellon University to end a long-standing patent dispute over chips used in hard disk drives.
Under the agreement announced Wednesday, Marvell has agreed to pay CMU US$750 million, with no ongoing royalty payments, which is far lower than the $1.54 billion that a court in Pennsylvania had awarded the university.
The two patents in the seven-year-old suit relate to methods to improve accuracy in the detection of recorded data when certain types of errors are likely due to the recording medium and reading mechanism. They were U.S. Patent No. 6,201,839, titled “Method and Apparatus for Correlation-Sensitive Adaptive Sequence Detection,” and related No. 6,438,180, titled “Soft and Hard Sequence Detection in ISI Memory Channels.”
The jury had awarded the university about $1.17 billion, corresponding to a 50-cents-per-chip royalty on Marvell’s sales. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, after other adjustments including for the extension of the covered period and charges of willful infringement, entered a judgment of roughly $1.54 billion and a continuing royalty at 50 cents per Marvell-sold chip.
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