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Apple Loses Patent Suit To University of Wisconsin, Faces Huge Damages (reuters.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the an-apple-a-day-does-not-keep-the-patent-lawyers-away dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Apple has frequently been in the news for various patent battles, but it's usually against one of their competitors. This time, Apple is on the losing end, and they're losing to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A jury found that the university's patent on improving processor efficiency (5,781,752) was valid, and Apple's A7, A8, and A8X chips infringed upon it. Those chips are found within recent iPhone and iPad models, which generated huge amounts of money. Because of the ruling, Apple could be liable for up to $826.4 million in damages, to be determined by later phases of the trial.

19 of 312 comments (clear)

  1. Live by the sword, die by the sword. by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm generally pretty against patents.

    However, I love seeing bad things happen to bad people, especially if it's ironic punishment. Yeah patents should probably be scrapped, but anyone who tries to patent rounded courners and then sues deserves to lose patent lawsuits.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
    1. Re:Live by the sword, die by the sword. by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      such as the concept of an integrated app store

      You mean like Cydia: the first app store for the iPhone? Fun fact it was available via a jailbreak before apple launched an app store.

      I'm not sure why they bothered with superficial patents on things like the shape of the device's packaging

      Because they're not much of an innovator. This is not a troll. They've never been terribly good at inventing brand new things. What they do very well, arguably better than anyone else is taking a bunch of existing but not very popular technologies and producing an implementation which doesn't massively suck before anyone else.

      I don't believbe I'm doing them a disservice with that, doing such a thing is clearly very hard else they wouldn't be the first people to do it after others have tried and failed. But it's not generally protectable with patents.

      In actual fact, I think claiming Apple has made innovations where they haven't is actually doing them a disservice because it detracts from what they are uniquely good at.

      Look at the history of things they're well known for:

      The iPod: the canonical MP3 player. Not the first, afterall we know it had no wireless and less space than the Nomad (lame!) but by far the most popular and became synonymous with MP player. Due in large part because all the ones before had horrendous interfaces and other awful misfeatures.

      Smartphones: IBM invented the concept of the toucscreen only phone in 1993. Nokia had this device https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... AT&T pretty much nailed the real concept of a smartphone http://www.xorl.org/people/njh... as one might recognise it with a decent UI and apps, except it needed a remote application server, too much connectivity and generally the tech wasn't up to it in 1998. Heck, they weren't even the first to put multitouch on a phone. What they did was combine all those elements in a way which didn't suck.

      And so on.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    2. Re:Live by the sword, die by the sword. by Maritz · · Score: 1, Insightful

      such as the concept of an integrated app store

      That is obvious. Like, really fucking obvious. With that in mind, I'm surprised they didn't patent it.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    3. Re:Live by the sword, die by the sword. by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Agreed, however, for many research orientated universities patents are a vital source of revenue.

      Wisconsin-Madison is a state-supported school. I realize these days it's considered okay to double- and triple-dip into taxpayers pockets, but this system where schools get to have tax money for research, and then patent the results for profit, is completely wrong. As a citizen, it means I'm paying for the research, then paying AGAIN to have any access to it. Based on state-granted monopoly.

      At best, any revenue derived from these university patents should go back into the general fund, not for the (unencumbered) sole use of the school.

      Of course, everybody talks about doing things for the public good, but as soon as an opportunity arises for any significant personal gain, they will screw the public every time. Seems to be part of what the US culture has become.

      --
      "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
      --- Jerry Garcia
    4. Re:Live by the sword, die by the sword. by jbengt · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm not sure why they bothered with superficial patents on things like the shape of the device's packaging, which was probably the least-important aspect of the product beyond initial marketing and making the device look 'cool' to prospective buyers.

      Don't conflate design patents, which are explicitly about looks and marketing, with utility patents, which are about inventions and have a longer term.
      IANAL, YMMV (especially outside the US)

    5. Re:Live by the sword, die by the sword. by jo_ham · · Score: 1, Insightful

      but anyone who tries to patent rounded courners and then sues deserves to lose patent lawsuits.

      Apple did a lame job in protecting their IP: patenting smart corners, instead of something more vital about their type of product, such as the concept of an integrated app store, and the kind of applications they brought to the platform, but the iPhone, their implementation of the smartphone truly was an innovation that got stolen by now competitors (e.g. Android).....

      I'm not sure why they bothered with superficial patents on things like the shape of the device's packaging, which was probably the least-important aspect of the product beyond initial marketing and making the device look 'cool' to prospective buyers.

      They have a design patent on the shape of the packaging and the look of the device because that is how business works. Ford have a design patent on the way the Mustang looks. Coke have a design patent on the way a coke bottle looks. A design patent is an incredibly common thing and it is subtly different from a method patent (such as the processor one that Apple has infringed).

      It seems on slashdot, however, that Apple is apparently held to a different standard about how it conducts business - somehow a design patent on the iPhone is bad, yet the design patent Google holds on the Google Glass, or the Nexus, or the Chomecast, or Ford's design patent on the Mustang, or the Fiesta, or the Focus and Samsung's design patent on their TVs, and Galaxy line of smartphones or Coke's design patent on the Coca Cola bottle are all ok.

      But no, Apple isn't allowed to have design patents - that somehow makes them evil.

    6. Re:Live by the sword, die by the sword. by jedidiah · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nope. Invention should be just that.

      You represent the current problem with the patent system. You think that just rearranging the deck chairs is something that is worthy of granting a 20 year long industry crushing monopoly to.

      People treat this stuff like candy when it's more like toxic waste.

      Patents are meant to encourage people to disclose useful trade secrets. It's supposed to make industry MORE efficient rather than less. It's not supposed to be some lame virtual land grab.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  2. Better coverage? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Is there a better article somewhere that explains WHAT was the issue?

    1. Re:Better coverage? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You'll notice that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-order_execution has a bunch of major companies implementing a version of "branch predictors" since the 1960s.

      You'll notice that none of them are being sued.

      Obviously, there's something more than just "caching"...

  3. Prior art? by ruir · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I could swear RISC processors, namely acorn archimedes and MIPS were doing that before that patent was filled...

  4. Jury competence? by bradley13 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is a very technical patent having to do with prediction. Not predicting branches, but predicting data. It might even be valid - I haven't kept up with processor architecture for too long. The gigantic question is: given the state of the art at the time this patent was filed, is it a logical extension obvious to a person "skilled in the art". That would be a very tough question to answer, even for an expert in the field.

    Just how is a jury of non-technical people supposed to figure this out?

    I'm sure they will have heard from Apple's experts: "This is obvious, a kid could figure it out", and the university's experts: "wow, what a clever invention". How will they have judged and compared these expert opinions? Their charisma? Their hairstyle?

    The whole patent system is one gigantic disaster. Even for potentially valid patents, the process is just wrong.

    --
    Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
    1. Re:Jury competence? by monkeyxpress · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No you only do the not looking for patents thing if you are a startup. The key difference is that if your startup fails then nobody cares, and if your startup succeeds and you are challenged by a patent holder you can just negotiate royalties without them being able to threaten triple damages on you. If you are Apple you do due diligence and freedom to operate processes on any new tech area you operate in because you aren't going to get away with flying under the radar. They probably have in house lawyers who trawl patents checking for this stuff.

      More than likely Apple did a very thorough assessment of the patent and concluded that they did not think they were infringing it. They have now been found to be infringing it so of course the plaintiff is going to try to get wilful damages on the basis that they knew about the patent. Somebody at Apple stuffed up in their assessment and it looks like they should have just negotiated a license early on, but on the other hand you can't just go around paying off everyone who you think might be able to win a jury trial.

  5. Paging Governor Walker by overshoot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Here's a nice windfall for the Job Creators of Wisconsin. This may be as much as another $800 million you can cut from University funding.

    --
    Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."
  6. Re:Love that this is modded troll by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is it trolling or flamebait to point that large companies are constantly suing one another over patents which mostly seem obvious to us, and that it's about time one of them came up short?

    I don't care if you're a Microsoft fanboi, an Apple fanboi, a Google fanboi, or a Samsung fanboi ... these patents and the lawsuits which stem from them more or less amount of a bunch of multi-billion dollar corporations carving up the industry and making sure nobody else can get into the game.

    Patents are probably doing more to stifle innovation that foster it, precisely because they all patent even the smallest thing to have in their war chest.

    Honestly, seeing the big players getting screwed in patent lawsuits gives me hope at some point they'll all wise up and start pushing for patent reform themselves.

    Because as long as it's a stacked deck which makes them huge amounts of money, they have no interest in things ever changing. If the only way for things to change is by costing these guys a bunch of money, bring it on.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  7. Re: You are joking, right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Yeah, 800 million dollars is nothing. You fucking idiot."

    They have $212 billion that they can't figure out what to do with. Otherwise it wouldn't be in the bank.

    And that's *Mister* fucking idiot to you.

  8. $823 Million ... 0.4% of Apple's cash on hand by enjar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Apple has somewhere around $200 billion in cash. If they have to pay $823 million they still will have around $200 billion in cash.

    If you buy something for around $200, do you care if it's $200 or $200.80? Do you really miss the extra 0.80?

  9. Free rider problem solutions? by sjbe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm generally pretty against patents.

    Fair enough. Patents do have their problems and I would agree that our current patent system has huge flaws. So what is your alternative solution to the free rider problem? That problem is the primary reason why patents (and copyrights) exist. I'm not opposed in principle to scrapping patents and doing something else. Our current system clearly needs major reforms but I have yet to hear anyone come up with any solution to the free rider problem that is better than a reformed version of a patent process. We know what scrapping the patent system would result in (it would not be good) because there are plenty of countries without such a system and it's easy to see the effects on their economies. So tell me, how do we solve the free rider problem so that we can get rid of patents? (and no, just ditching them wholesale will not work and won't happen anyway)

  10. Re:Love that this is modded troll by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If the only way for things to change is by costing these guys a bunch of money, bring it on

    To Apple, a half a billion dollars is not "big money".

  11. University patents funded by the public by laughingskeptic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    These university patents are paid for by the tax-paying public, why does this no longer make them public domain?