A US court has ordered Samsung Electronics to pay an amount of $400 million for infringing a patent owned by the licensing arm of a South Korean university.

Tech giants Qualcomm Inc and GlobalFoundries Inc also were found to have infringed the patent but weren't told to pay any damages to the licensing arm of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.

The dispute centers on a technology known as FinFet, a type of transistor that boosts performance and reduces power consumption for smaller chips.

Samsung, however, had told the jury that it worked with the university to develop the technology and denied infringing the patent.

Samsung has also challenged the validity of the patent.