Intel Sued Over Core 2 Duo Patent Infringement

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like Intel is being sued over a patent infringement alleged to be in the Core 2 Duo microprocessor design. 'The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) is charging Intel Corporation with patent infringement of a University of Wisconsin-Madison invention that significantly improves the efficiency and speed of computer processing. The foundation's complaint identifies the Intel CoreTM 2 Duo microarchitecture as infringing WARF's United States Patent No. 5,781,752, entitled "Table Based Data Speculation Circuit for Parallel Processing Computer." WARF contacted Intel in 2001, and made repeated attempts, including meeting face-to-face with company representatives, to offer legal licensing opportunities for the technology.' The text of the complaint [PDF] is also available via WARF's site."

Comments

Re:Universities Are Good (Sometimes)

[arcanelogic]

I happen to recognize two of the patent owners: Andreas Moshovos and Gurindar Sohi. Guri in particular is an established member of the Computer Architecture research community. He's worked on many different aspects of speculation in hardware. The claim in the patent infringement is that the work on "Table-based Speculation.." was presented at Intel and attempts were made by the authors to negotiate a license for the technology. It wouldn't surprise me if there's some merit to this claim.