Apple must pay $837 million for infringing Wi-Fi patents from Caltech, jury decides

Nearly four years after the California Institute of Technology sued Apple and Broadcom for allegedly infringing four of the university’s patents on Wi-Fi data transmission, a federal jury has agreed that the two companies infringed — and has awarded $1.1 billion in damages to Caltech for the infringement, Law360 reports.

Reporting from the courtroom today, Law360 writes that the jury ordered Apple to pay $837 million, with Broadcom owing $270 million. That seems to be based on Caltech’s hypothetical estimate of what it might have been able to negotiate in royalties back in 2010 — if Broadcom and Apple had actually struck a deal with Caltech before they put Broadcom’s Wi-Fi chips into new Apple devices.

Caltech figured that Apple would...

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