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back to article Marvell, Carnegie Mellon agree to slash disk drive chip patent check in half – to a mere $750m

Chipmaker Marvell has agreed to pay $750m to settle its long-running patent feud with Carnegie Mellon University. The two sides agreed to a settlement package to end a case that was due to be reheard by the Western Pennsylvania District Court on appeal after a US Appellate Court struck down an earlier ruling that would have …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    Pair of patents Marvell accused of violating

    Did Marvell use the contents of the patents in their design or could they have come to the same conclusions independently. If so, does that mean that any combination of Viterbi detector and a BCJR detector would violate the Carnegie patents even if the Marvell designers had never read it?

    'The Court found that Marvell knew or should have known of the CMU patents and that Marvell did not establish a good-faith basis for believing it was not infringing.' ref

    1 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Pair of patents Marvell accused of violating

      "could they have come to the same conclusions independently"

      Doesn't matter - a patent is about who thought of it first.

      2 0 Reply
  2. CheesyTheClown

    Wow!!!!

    Just read the patents... I almost never consider patents to be special and not-obvious. I honestly wish I'd have seen these 8 years ago and licensed the tech... it could have saved me 500+ hours of development. Why haven't I seen this in any mainstream signal processing books?

    It's just so rare the patent system works... I'm not sure what this means for the world... I wonder if the copyright system might work next... then hell will truly freeze over.

    Maybe Kanye West can ask CMU for help.

    3 0 Reply
  3. frank ly

    "The company noted that it had already set aside $388m in legal reserves for the case."

    Is that an indication of their legal costs or does it have some other meaning?

    0 0 Reply
  4. Mark 85

    Carnegie Mellon said that after legal fees it would be splitting the settlement money with the researchers who invented the technology

    I would hope that the researchers get more money than the lawyers... but... lawyers are lawyers instead of researchers for a reason

    3 1 Reply
    1. Mark 85
      Reply Icon

      I think I got DV'd by a lawyer... :)

      0 0 Reply

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