Western Digital owes $315.7 million for infringing data security patent, US jury says

By Blake Brittain

Data storage provider Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) must pay $315.7 million in damages for violating a patent owner’s rights in data security technology, a jury in California federal court said on Friday.

The jury determined that several Western Digital self-encrypting hard drive products infringe a SPEX Technologies patent covering data encryption innovations, a SPEX attorney said in an email.

San Jose, California-based SPEX sued Western Digital in 2016. SPEX said it bought the patent at issue from Spyrus, a cryptography company that developed the technology for encrypting sensitive communications.

The lawsuit said Western Digital data storage devices including its Ultrastar, My Book and My Passport products infringed the patent. Western Digital denied the allegations.

In July, a different jury in the same Santa Ana, California, court said Western Digital owed more than $262 million to another company for infringing patents related to increasing hard drive storage capacity.