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

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday October 13, 2015 @11:42PM 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.

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Re:Better coverage? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-14 00:59 · Score: 5, Interesting

Hi,
I've done CPU design. I'm not a professional, but I'm definitely familiar with it. The amazing thing about a lot of CPU innovations is, once thought up, they seem incredibly obvious. But you get somebody holding your hand and you're trying to think of what they did before they flat out tell you, and it usually only dawns on you about 1 or 2 steps before they flat out tell you.
Just because something seems obvious once you've been told about it, doesn't mean it was obvious.