Marvell Technology on Wednesday said it will pay Carnegie Mellon University $750 million to settle a lawsuit accusing it of infringing two hard disk drive patents. Six monhs ago, a federal appeals courtsaid that an earlier $1.54 billion damages award against the chipmaker should be reduced significantly and that a new trial be held, but that Marvell must pay at least $278.4 million.

Carnegie Mellon had sued Marvell in March 2009 over patents issued that related to how accurately hard disk drive circuits read data from high-speed magnetic disks.

The university said at least nine Marvell circuit devices incorporated the patents, which were issued in 2001 and 2002, letting the company sell billions of chips without permission.

Carnegie Mellon said some of the $750 million settlement will go to the inventors of the technology at issue.