Apple will have to pay $838M of patent infringement damages to Caltech after its verdict appeal is rejected

The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has sued Apple for patent infringement back in 2016 over the use of four Wi-Fi technologies. The lawsuit resulted in a fine of $1.1 billion for Apple and Broadcom, a chip manufacturer company that supplies wireless components to various companies, among which is Apple.

Apple was required to pay $838 million of damages to Caltech, while Broadcom had to cover $270 million. That fine was ordered by a jury in California back in January, as reported by Bloomberg Technology, and Apple has, since then, appealed the verdict and recently lost the appeal.

Previously, Apple and Broadcom had denied infringing those patents and had disputed the fine of $1.1 billion, demanded by the California Institute of Technology. Caltech’s lawyers maintained the position that the patent in question was found in a lot of Apple’s products, namely the iPhone, iPad, iMac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, HomePod and even the AirPort routers that Apple discontinued back in 2018. The fine’s amount was therefore grounded in the US market’s sales of over 598 million Apple devices that infringed the patent.

Unfortunately for the Cupertino-based tech giant, it lost the appeal and the fine remains, reports Reuters. The validity of the lawsuit, especially of one of the patents, was challenged by Apple on grounds of “obviousness”, meaning that if a technology is obvious to either experts or the general public, it cannot be patented. More details of Apple’s argument are unavailable, however, the appeal was rejected by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.