A California court has reduced the amount Western Digital (WD) must pay after it lost its court battle against SPEX Technologies. The jury originally awarded SPEX $316 million in damages, plus another $237 million in interest, after it found the storage company guilty of infringing on SPEX Patent No. 6,088,802. WD appealed the decision, and the court responded in two ways — it denied the appeal based on the company’s liability to SPEX Technologies, but reduced the amount from over half a billion dollars to just one dollar, as reported by The Register.
“Throughout this litigation, SPEX’s damages theory changed as certain evidence and theories became unavailable. At this stage, and for the reasons discussed above, there is insufficient evidence from which the Court could determine a reasonable royalty,” Judge James V. Selna wrote in his order. He also added, “Accordingly, the Court enters nominal damages in the amount of $1.”
