Supreme Court deals setback to Apple, Broadcom in their legal battle with Caltech

The Supreme Court on Monday dealt a setback to Apple and Broadcom, declining to hear an appeal filed by the companies in a billion-dollar patent case brought by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), according to The Wall Street Journal.

The high court’s denial sets the stage for a damages-only jury trial to determine how much Apple and Broadcom should pay for infringing Caltech patents relating to wireless technology, the article adds. This is just the latest step in the ongoing legal brouhaha in which Caltech previously won US$1.1 billion in damages from the companies.

In 2016 the the Caltech accused Apple of selling various iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch models, along with other Wi-Fi products, that incorporate IRA/LDPC encoders and/or decoders and allegedly infringe on its patents. The university sought monetary damages. 

In January 2020, a California federal jury ruled that Apple and Broadcom infringed three Caltech data transmission patents with Wi-Fi chips used in hundreds of millions of iPhones and other devices, awarding the university over $1.1 billion in damages. Apple was ordered to pay $837.8 million, and Broadcom was hit with a $270.2 million verdict, according to lawyers for Caltech. 

Apple and Broadcom appealed. However, in April, the Federal Circuit rejected Apple‘s bid to overturn a patent board decision upholding Caltech’s patent for wireless data transmissions. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board ruled in favor of Caltech in 2018 after reviewing U.S. Patent No. 7,116,710 while Caltech’s parallel infringement case proceeded in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.