By Blake Brittain
The U.S. Solicitor General has urged the Supreme Court to reject an appeal by Apple Inc and Broadcom Inc stemming from their $1.1 billion trial loss to the California Institute of Technology in a patent infringement case. The companies had argued that they should have been allowed to challenge the patents’ validity at trial, but the Federal Circuit upheld the decision to bar the invalidity arguments because Apple previously could have raised them in its petitions for Patent Office review of the patents.
The Solicitor General said in her Tuesday brief that the Federal Circuit interpreted the law correctly. Caltech has also sued Microsoft Corp, Samsung Electronics Co, Dell Technologies Inc and HP Inc for infringing the same patents in separate cases that are still pending.
A jury in 2020 ordered Apple to pay Caltech $837.8 million and Broadcom to pay $270.2 million. The Federal Circuit took issue with the amount of the award and sent the case back last year for a new trial on damages, which is yet to be scheduled.
The companies told the justices that the Federal Circuit misread the law, which only bars arguments that could have been raised during the review itself. However, the Solicitor General’s filing suggests that the Supreme Court is unlikely to overturn the Federal Circuit’s ruling.