The head of Toshiba Corp. said on Friday the company would consider a “legal response” to a California jury verdict ordering it to pay Lexar Media Inc. $465 million in punitive damages.
In March, Toshiba was ordered to pay Lexar the giant sum after the jury found it had stolen Lexar trade secrets related to NAND-type flash memory, which is widely used in digital cameras and photo-snapping mobile phones.
“We developed the NAND flash-related technology on our own,” said Tadashi Okamura, who stepped down as president on Friday and was approved as the new chairman. “The ruling is totally unjust and we would like to consider a legal response.”
Okamura’s comments came at its annual shareholders’ meeting before Atsutoshi Nishida was voted in as the new president.
Toshiba had said in March that it planned to challenge the case, but the comments by Okamura suggest the company may be closer to taking some form of legal action. A few shareholders expressed concerns about the case.
A Toshiba spokesman said nothing had been decided about potential legal action.
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A California court on Tuesday delayed a ruling in Lexar’s attempts to keep Toshiba, the world’s seventh-largest chip maker, from selling memory microchips in the United States.
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Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Jack Komar in a hearing questioned whether several of Lexar’s claimed trade secrets remained trade secrets.
Lexar asked to file another motion in the case, and Komar gave the memory chip technology company until June 27 to do so.














