AEROSPACE

Hughes Seeks Higher Damages in Patent Case: Hughes Aircraft Co., which was awarded $114 million in June in a patent infringement suit against the U.S. government, said it appealed the amount as too low. Hughes had sought more than $1 billion in the case, in which the government was found to have violated Hughes’ patent covering the device that pioneered communications satellite technology. Hughes, a Los Angeles-based unit of General Motors Corp., said the royalty rate on government satellites using the device--which was used to determine the damages--was neither fair nor just compensation.