WD to appeal $262M hard drive patent infringement damages awarded to German scientist

WD has been ordered to pay $262M in damages after a patent infringement case relating to hard disk drive (HDD) recording technologies concluded.  A jury in California agreed with MR Technologie of Germany’s lawyers, who claimed that WD flagrantly applied patented IP “on a massive scale.” WD is accused of using this tech, starting from 2018, to boost the areal density of its HDDs from about 300 Gbit/sq in to 1,000 Gbit/sq in, reports Blocks and Files. However, WD insists its 400 researchers invented the areal density boosting tech it used independently, and it immediately asserted that it would appeal the decision.

MR Technologie (MRT) is owned by Dieter Suess, a professor and head of the Physics of Functional Materials at the University of Vienna. Two patents were in contention during the lawsuit, U.S. Patent No. 9,928,864 and U.S. Patent No. 11,138,997.

As you might expect, the patent documents are quite technical but they both concern optimizations to the magnetic recording technology that HDDs rely on. One proposes “a recording media that overcomes the writeability problem of perpendicular recording media” using a particular multilayer exchange spring recording media coupling. Another patent concerns the “spin orbit torque effect” and optimizations for multi-layer magnetic recording media.

Lawyers representing MRT successfully convinced the jury that WD had applied Suess’s patented technologies throughout its HDD portfolio starting from 2018. Moreover, according to the source report, the plaintiff’s lawyers indicated that these technologies were instrumental to WD more than tripling the areal density of its spinning rust devices since that time. Without these inventions WD would have failed to be competitive, summed up lawyers acting on behalf of MRT/Suess.

WD isn’t going to simply roll over and accept the judgment, then post a massive check to Suess now that the California court has ruled. Reports on the verdict say that WD “will appeal the verdict as soon as possible.” The storage giant counter-accused the plaintiff of claiming false credit and claimed the success of WD was thanks to the decades of research and efforts of its sizable team of engineers.