Western Digital Ordered to Pay $315.7 Million for Patent Infringement

By Blake Brittain

Data storage provider Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) has been ordered to pay $315.7 million in damages for violating a patent owner's rights regarding data security technology. This decision came from a jury in a California federal court on Friday.

The jury found that several of Western Digital's self-encrypting hard drive products infringed upon a SPEX Technologies patent that includes data encryption innovations, according to a SPEX attorney’s statement in an email.

Based in San Jose, California, SPEX filed the lawsuit against Western Digital in 2016. SPEX acquired the patent from Spyrus, a company that had developed the encryption technology for sensitive communications.

Sue Pontius, co-founder of Spyrus, expressed gratitude towards the jury for their decision, while SPEX's lead attorney, Marc Fenster, described the verdict as a "vindication of Sue Pontius and her perseverance."

In response, a spokesperson for Western Digital stated that the company disagrees with the verdict and intends to challenge it through post-trial motions and potential appeals.

The lawsuit claimed that Western Digital's data storage devices—such as the Ultrastar, My Book, and My Passport—were in violation of the patent. Western Digital has denied these allegations.

Earlier this July, another jury in the same Santa Ana court determined that Western Digital owed over $262 million to a different company for infringing patents related to enhanced hard drive storage capacity.