A California jury has awarded MR Technologie of Germany $262 million in patent infringement damages in a jury trial against Western Digital.
MR Technologie (MRT) sued Western Digital in August 2022 saying it used IP patented by Dieter Suess, U.S. Patent Nos. 9,928,864 and 11,138,997, titled “Multilayer exchange spring recording media.” Patent 9,928,864 was filed in 2006 and awarded in March 2018, and 11,138,997 in October 2021. Suess has a number of such patents referring to multi-layer exchange spring recording media.
Suess is a professor and head of the Physics of Functional Materials department at the University of Vienna and MRT is his company. The two patents in question refer to ways to increase the signal to noise ratio in the recording medium layer of hard disk drives and using anisotropy – directionally dependent – magnetic effects in a multi-layer recording material to help switch bits from one magnetic direction to another.
His patent also refers to a nucleation host, a point in the recording medium’s detailed structure where an anisotropy phase change occurs. A “spring recording” effect embodying this helps increase the HDD’s area density and its overall capacity.
According to Law360, MRT’s lawyers accused WD of mis-using Suess’s IP “on a massive scale” by applying it in almost every disk drive it has produced since 2018. This meant it could increase areal density overall from 300 Gbit/sq in to 1,000 Gbit/sq in.
WD, in turn, claimed the firm had not infringed Suess’ patents as it used different technologies to increase the areal density in the recording medium, not needing a nucleation host component. The storage giant’s lawyers said WD had 400 researchers working in this area and claimed WD invented its areal density increase technology independently and without reference to Suess’ work.
According to Reuters, WD’s lawyer argued that: “MRT’s lawyers have given false credit, to a fairly magnificent extent, to Dr. Suess for the work of thousands of [Western Digital] engineers over decades and across the planet.”
The jury disagreed with WD’s argument. WD plans to appeal.
Bootnote
The case is MR Technologie GmbH v. Western Digital Technologies Inc, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, No. 8:22-cv-01599.
