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Apple Inc. and Broadcom Inc. lost a round at the U.S. Supreme Court Monday in a long-running patent dispute with the California Institute of Technology.
The high court declined to hear the tech companies' appeal of a lower court's decision in their case. After losing at the district court level, three years ago, Cupertino-based Apple and San Jose-based Broadcom appealed. When a federal appeals court largely upheld the decision, the tech giants appealed again to the Supreme Court, arguing that the lower courts had erred in not allowing them to challenge the validity of Pasadena-based CalTech's patents, Reuters reported.
By refusing to hear Apple and Broadcom's appeal, the high court essentially let stand the decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
CalTech sued the two companies in 2016, claiming they had violated the institution's patents on data transmission that can help improve Wi-Fi speeds on mobile devices. Four years later, a jury ruled in the university's favor, awarding it a $1.1 billion verdict.
While the Federal Circuit Court upheld the decision that Apple and Broadcom had violated CalTech's patents, it overturned the monetary damages, ordering a new trial to determine those. That has yet to take place.
After CalTech filed suit, Apple and Broadcom attempted to have the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office review and invalidate the university's patents. Instead, the agency upheld them, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Federal Circuit Court ruled that in the court case, Apple and Broadcom couldn't raise questions about the patents' validity that it hadn't raised with the Patent and Trademark Office, according to the reports.
Broadcom is a longtime supplier of wireless chips to Apple for the iPhone maker's devices. Earlier this year, the pair signed a multiyear, multibillion-dollar agreement through which Broadcom will develop components for 5G wireless technology for Apple.
Shares of Apple, which is headed by CEO Tim Cook, closed regular trading off less than 1% to $185.27 a piece Monday. Broadcom's shares closed down less than 1% to 821.63 each.