There have only been two larger previous awards

Among the disk makers, Western Digital has been its biggest customer over recent years. Carnegie Mellon had accused Marvell of including technologies—invented by one of its professors and a student—designed to increase the accuracy disk drives read data at high speeds. The university told the court the firm had sold 2.3 billion chips incorporating the disputed inventions between 2003 and 2012.

 Marvell had argued both that its chips had not used the university’s tech, and that the patents should never have been awarded in the first place—but the jury disagreed. The damage award has the potential to be the biggest in US patent history. There have only been two larger previous awards, according to law data provider Lex Machina.

 In 2007 Microsoft was ordered to pay Lucent Technologies US$1.52 billion in damages over disputed MP3 and MPEG video technologies; and in 2009 Abbot Laboratories was ordered to pay Centocor Ortho Biotech US$1.67 billion for infringing its antibodies biotech patents—however, both judgements were later overturned.

 That leaves the recent US$1.05 billion jury award to Apple in its case versus Samsung as the largest outstanding figure—the judge in the case has yet to finalise the sum. However, one expert said it would be some time before the details of the disk drive dispute would be finalised.