Irvine-based storage products maker Western Digital Corp. was ordered to pay its chief rival $758 million related to a bevy of trade-secrets claims.
The Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the arbitration ruling of the state’s appellate court that awarded the sum to Cupertino-based Seagate Technology. The case included allegations of misappropriation of eight alleged trade secrets obtained by Western Digital through a former Seagate employee.
The decision, which can’t be appealed, ends more than three years of litigation related to the matter. The payment won’t affect future operations of Western Digital, which overtook Seagate as the world’s largest hard drive maker in revenue and units sold after its $4.8 billion takeover of San Jose-based Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Ltd. in 2012.
The companies also compete in the emerging market of solid-state drives, which use chips instead of spinning disks to store data and are geared for corporate customers.
