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

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.

Comments

Legislative Matching Funds

[bill_mcgonigle]

Great - Apple should put as much money as it pays out in patent settlements into bribing ... err, lobbying ... politicians to enact comprehensive patent reform to get rid of this kind of economy-crushing activity.

Should be more

[rebelwarlock]

Apple should be required to pay twice the entirety of the gross sales of all the infringing devices. That way, they're guaranteed to take a loss for this behavior, and will at least think twice before trying something like this again.

Re:Live by the sword, die by the sword.

[mvdwege]

the iPhone, their implementation of the smartphone truly was an innovation

Bullshit. It was a slick repackaging of existing concepts. Nothing wrong with that, it was very slick, and existing smartphones had plenty of rough edges that could use some sanding off, but innovative it was not. Unless you want the word to lose all meaning.