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Apple loses patent infringement case, must pay $234 million

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 17 Oct 2015 8:52 User comments (3)

Apple loses patent infringement case, must pay $234 million

Apple has lost the patent infringement case brought by the University of Wisconsin's Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), and must pay $234 million in damages.
The processor patent tech was ruled to have been used in Apple's A7, A8, and A8X processors, and WARF had initially asked for $862 million before reducing the damages request to $400 million.

U.S. District Judge William Conley had ruled earlier this week that Apple did not willfully infringe on WARF's patents so the damages are significantly lower than what was being asked for but still obviously very hefty.

"Table based data speculation circuit for parallel processing computer" (improving processor efficiency) was the patent in question and was granted in 1998. WARF sued Intel in 2008 over the patent and won $110 million. WARF uses its income to pay out grants to researchers, including $58 million last year.

Last month, the foundation sued Apple again, this time for their latest round of products, iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, and iPad Pro. Apple, the most profitable company on the planet, made $10.67 billion in net profit last quarter, alone.

Source:
Reuters

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3 user comments

117.10.2015 23:54

Ha!

The gander bathes in goose sauce...

218.10.2015 00:26

Only after they exhaust their appeals will they pay anything. It will take years.

321.10.2015 03:33

What has to be found out is the antecedents of EVERY engineer that worked on the design of the processor and see if absolutely any of them had any kind of connection to anyone who had any kind of connection to the University of Wisconsin. That should prove if the infringement was intentional or not.

BTW what kind of gifts, if any, did the judge receive from Apple?

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