October 20, 2024 – According to a report by Reuters, a jury in a California federal court has ordered Western Digital to pay $315.7 million in damages for infringing on a data encryption patent held by SPEX Technologies. The patent, originally developed by Spyrus Inc., pertains to data encryption technology for PCMCIA and Compact Flash devices, and was later acquired by SPEX Technologies.
The legal dispute dates back to 2016, when SPEX Technologies sued Western Digital, alleging that several of its self-encrypting storage devices violated two patents originally developed by Spyrus, numbered US6088802A and US6003135A. These patents, filed in 1997 and expired in 2017, cover technology that enables secure communication between external devices and hosts, performing one or more security operations to ensure the safety of data stored on the host. Although the patents have expired, the lawsuit was filed before their expiration, allowing the case to proceed.
Western Digital has expressed strong disagreement with the ruling, denying any patent infringement. The company intends to continue its defense through post-trial motions and, if necessary, file an appeal.
This is not the first time Western Digital has been embroiled in such legal controversies. Just this July, another jury in the same California court ordered the company to pay over $262 million in damages for infringing a patent related to hard disk storage capacity.
