The U.S. Supreme Court reportedly refused to hear Apple and Broadcom’s challenge to the validity of Caltech’s data transmission patents in a patent infringement lawsuit on Monday. At the same time, however, a retrial was denied for the $1.1 billion in damages the jury earlier found the companies should have paid to Caltech.
A Supreme Court judge denied Apple and Broadcom’s appeal of the lower court’s ruling. The earlier ruling affirmed a trial judge’s decision not to allow the two companies to challenge the validity of their patents in the Caltech lawsuit.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which specializes in patent cases, rejected the companies’ arguments, saying they failed to raise them in earlier USPTO review proceedings. Apple and Broadcom, on the other hand, argued that they should have been allowed to challenge the validity of the patents during the trial.
The jury previously found that Apple and Broadcom infringed Caltech’s patents, requiring Apple to pay $837.8 million in damages and Broadcom to pay $270.2 million in damages. However, the Federal Circuit challenged the amount of damages and remanded the case for a new trial to determine the appropriate damages award.
Caltech sued Apple and Broadcom in federal court in Los Angeles in 2016, claiming that millions of iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches and other devices using Broadcom WiFi chips infringed on data transmission patents held by the university.
Apple is a major buyer of Broadcom chips, and the two sides reached a $15 billion chip supply agreement in January 2020 that ends in 2023. Broadcom estimates that 20 percent of its revenue comes from Apple.
The Federal Circuit upheld the trial judge’s decision not to allow the companies to argue the invalidity of the patents at this stage, as they could have raised those arguments in their petitions for patent review filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Apple and Broadcom, however, told the Supreme Court that the Federal Circuit’s interpretation of the law was inaccurate, saying that the law only disallows arguments that might have been raised during the patent examination process. The U.S. government in May urged the judge to dismiss the case, saying the Federal Circuit’s interpretation of the law was accurate.
Caltech also sued Microsoft, Samsung Electronics, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, saying those companies also infringed on the same patent.
