Slashdot Mirror
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 $826.4 million in damages, to be determined by later phases of the trial.
I'm generally pretty against patents.
However, I love seeing bad things happen to bad people, especially if it's ironic punishment. Yeah patents should probably be scrapped, but anyone who tries to patent rounded courners and then sues deserves to lose patent lawsuits.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Isn't that Apple's mantra?
Good artists copy; great artists steal.
This story made me laugh. However I feel Apple will whittle away at the amount and get away with paying a tiny fraction.
Is there a better article somewhere that explains WHAT was the issue?
Great - Apple should put as much money as it pays out in patent settlements into bribing ... err, lobbying ... politicians to enact comprehensive patent reform to get rid of this kind of economy-crushing activity.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I could swear RISC processors, namely acorn archimedes and MIPS were doing that before that patent was filled...
So if Apple were forced to pay this money, who would end up receiving it? The UW students? Faculty? Administrators? The taxpayers who helped foot the bill for the state-funded UW?
I'm pretty sure there's more loose change than that in the couch cushions at one infinite loop.
The bigger question: does it also occur in the A9/A9X, or were they just not out when the lawsuit was filed. Could UW request an injunction against the current crop of processors as well?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Apple has more in the bank than 112 of 162 countries in the world combined (is it still only $200 billion) .
Whether or not they whittle away at the amount (they will), it isn't going to be financially relevant to Apple.
oh yes, and that chip thing.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
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.
This is not a troll, if anything it's flamebait. And there's a moderation option for that! This is why you only give iFanboys one mouse button. If you gave them two, they'd consistently push the wrong one.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Wouldn't we be surprised if Apple decided to simply pay the fine in cash, since they made such huge amounts with it anyway, and simultaniously give something back to the 'community' for further research and education?
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,
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.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), the people who actually hold the patents (the university isn't allowed to have them directly), did a similar thing to Intel not all that long ago (5 years?). I guess I can't complain since WARF funds my research (and a lot of research on campus -- having an internal funding mechanism is great). However, I recall that a bunch of the Intel money was supposed to go to the college of engineering (COE), which seems to have spent the money redecorating Engineering Hall (which, admittedly, is super ugly) and cutting ECE teaching assistant positions. It would be nice if the COE got a chunk of this and actually put it to good use...
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?
The money goes to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). The university isn't allowed to own the patents directly. That means that the university and state can't just raid the money as they see fit, which is probably a good thing.
WARF doles out the money in various ways. Much goes to research on campus, some goes to "faculty retention" (i.e. when another university tries to poach a strong faculty member, WARF steps in with money to keep them here), some is administrative costs (WARF assists university personnel in getting patents), some gets returned directly to the university, some goes to the people who did the research to get the patent, etc.
In short, the answer is "all of the above and more".
I responded to the wrong post --- sorry. Stupid beta.
Ever since a court decision 10-20 years ago, most companies pay nothing for a patent assignment. It used to be that you had to have "tangible consideration", so you assigned your patent for a dollar. I heard from colleagues that Hughes Aircraft (pre-GM) gave you a copy of any book rebound in leather. Some companies would pay a bonus for a filed patent application (a few hundred bucks, maybe).
Now, though, the consideration (in a contracts law sense) is that you are allowed to keep working for the company.
Universities tend to have schemes where the inventor gets 25% of the royalties, the institution gets 75%. Often, they will also do some sort of matching thing, where if the inventor invests their 25% into research at the institution, they'll kick in a matching amount (e.g. you get 50% to improve your lab, and the uni spends 50% on anything else it wants to)
I'm sorry for my reply. Please accept my sincere apologies. You are right, that is couch cushion money to Apple.
I now see that I was in the wrong, and I will endeavour to better myself in the future.
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)
Does this mean governor Scooter Walker can cut even more out of their budget?
'Huge' damages against Apple of sub-1 billion is not all that noteworthy when revenue Q1 alone was $78+ billion. I reminds me of when Attorney General Janet Reno was going to hold Microsoft in Contempt threatening to fine $1 per day and Gate's response was something to the affect of "1 make a million an hour, f*ck them".
As with almost all patents, most definitely not the people who actually came up with the invention.
That is simply false. Researchers here aren't required to go through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) to get patents. If the researchers decide to, they make a contract with WARF where the researchers get a cut of the profits. Even grad students often get a cut.
I don't know how it works at other universities, but universities aren't for profit corporations -- at least not yet. If universities didn't give faculty a cut of patent revenu, I'd imagine they'd soon find their strong, patent-generating faculty going elsewhere.
it ain't over 'til it's over.
Apple is currently earning around $18 billion in profit each quarter. So, while I'm sure it will be a boon for Wisconsin and Apple will try to get out of paying it - $823 million isn't going to hurt Apple's bottom line too much. I'm sure they see it as the cost of doing business.
Wow! Politeness on Slashdot? Must be a joke?
These university patents are paid for by the tax-paying public, why does this no longer make them public domain?
I'm curious, have others licensed this tech, or is Apple simply the first to get sued? The article mentioned Intel, but what about other mobile manufacturers?
I've been trying to figure out if this patent covers something ARM implemented, or something Apple added when they modified the ARM A7 and A8 processor designs for their own devices. That is, did UWM sue Apple as a proxy and a prelude to suing every other company out there using an ARM processor? Which would be a huge deal. Or does the reach of this patent end here (other than eliminating predictive branch ordering from future processors until the patent expires)? Which is not very newsworthy except for Apple.
Unfortunately all the news articles I've found on it so far are written at the level of a jury of non-technical people, and provide no information which could answer this really important question. Maybe someone here has come across a better article?
Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes and Bruce Woolley wrote:
I heard you on my wireless back in fifty-two
UnknowingFool wrote:
The problem with the "no wireless" part of the comparison back then was the Nomad didn't have wireless either.
Several Creative Nomad models included an FM radio, which is more wireless than anything on the first generation iPod classic. In fact, a lot of present-day smartphone chipsets include an FM radio, but carriers have disabled them to sell bigger data plans.
This is effectively an instruction prefetch and branch prediction scheme. How does every modern multi-core processor not infringe on this patient or have (all) other manufactures licensed it from UofWis? Didn't they review the patents that Samsung had licensed for the ARM processors that preceded the A4 and its successors?
universities aren't for profit corporations
True, not all regionally accredited universities are for profit. Some are though, such as the University of Phoenix (NASDAQ: APOL).
Apple is the world famous patent troll, demanding billions for trivial recreation of bathroom slide lock on a phone screen. It's like patenting cat videos in the world full of cats.
This patent, on the other hand, appears to be a genuine, non-trivial invention. I hope they pay through their nose and get impacted enough to rethink what kind of IP laws they want to lobby for in future.
This ruling should match the Samsung rulings, and prevent any products from being shipped that violate this patent. You can't cherry pick the damages based on the involved companies.
I am sure the infringement paid itself off many times over by the sales surge due to higher speeds of the products Apple sold. Tempest in a teapot at best.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
The GrandParent comment says that there was prior art. That invalidates anything coming later.
The problem here is that we acquiesce to an insanity. Universities were supposed to produce knowledge and to teach students, instead they seem to concentrate on money making and football, oh wait, it is the same. I feel so good about how my tax money is being spent.
nt
"the present invention provides a speculation decision circuit for use in a processor capable of executing program instructions in an execution order differing from the program order of the instructions"
Dynamically optimize the execution order of the instruction set depending on previous hits or misses.
Wow, with all that money coming in, that means they can reduce tuition fees, right? Right??
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.
Don't know about Wisconsin but for the University of California (UC) system the the IP licensing helps pay for the university system in general, i.e. avoids a dip into taxpayer pockets. 50% of the revenue goes to fund the statewide UC system in general, 25% goes to the department(s) of the team members, and 25% goes to the team. The licensing basically funds much research, its a virtuous circle providing more research dollars than would have been available in a purely taxpayer funded system.
On the licensing side it is a "discriminatory" system, smaller and local organizations get much lower fees than multinational conglomerates operating outside of California. So California residents also benefit by the promotion of jobs in California.
Your assumption that state residents are inherently harmed by such IP licensing practices is mistaken.
The invention was a result of research, funded by the public, so the public should own the patent. It should be under an MIT or BSD-style license in the public domain.
That makes more sense for federally funded projects than state funded. If state funded there would be free rides from the other states, in addition to the international free rides both federal and state funded projects would have.
FWIW the University of California system has a "discriminator" licensing scheme where smaller and local organizations get lower fees. Giving back to the California public in the sense of jobs but also in the sense that the fees help pay for the statewide university system (50% of fee revenue, 25% to team's department(s), 25% to team). It ends up being a virtuous circle in that the state gets more research dollars than it would have in a purely taxpayer funded system.
Also the University of California's BSD license was covering copyrighted IP not patented IP. Two very different things.
To dialogue more cooperatively: I do believe in the possibility of a system that would somehow incentivize creators without pretending it's possible to own a thought, everywhere in the universe simultaneously forever.
So what is your system? You believe it is possible so either give up the details or concede that you are basically arguing in favor of patents. Just "believing in the possibility" is meaningless. This is EXACTLY what I'm talking about. Nobody has actual ideas that improve things. You either get modest improvements to the status quo patent system or you get people wanting to abolish all patents with no care as to the consequences of doing that. Unless you have a better way to deal with the free rider problem you aren't improving things and abolishing patents (even with all their problems) will demonstrably not improve people's economic lives overall.
Using WARF is _voluntary_; UW researchers don't have to go through them. They can patented inventions on their own and take all the profit if they'd like (and pay all the filing costs, pitch it to companies, sue infringes, etc. on their own). Moreover, what middlemen take the money? The money returns to the university one way or another -- mostly as research grants within the university, not pocketed by a CEO.
Chill out.
True. I should have said that _public_ universities aren't for profit corporations.
If you're shopping for a high-end laptop, then there is no (or little) Apple tax. However, Apple just doesn't make low-end products. So if you're looking at a $400 Windows laptop (Dell Inspiron 15 3000), there simply is no competing Apple machine. Apple's lowest-end laptop starts at $900.
Even if you use UW facilities for research? That's doubtful.
Doubt all you want, the facts are the facts.
Here's WARF:
UW–Madison faculty, staff and students are not obligated to assign their intellectual property to WARF, unless required to do so by federal law or the terms of a sponsored research agreement with a third party.
http://www.warf.org/about-us/f...
Here's the official UW Policy:
he UW is unique among U.S. universities in that it does not claim ownership rights in the intellectual property generated by its faculty, staff, or students, except when required by funding agreements. UW inventors do, however, have an obligation to disclose all inventions created while carrying out university duties, using any university funding, or using university premises, supplies, or equipment. It is the role of the UW–Madison Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education to perform an equity review for each UW–Madison invention disclosure to determine what obligations may attach to each invention and who may have rights to the invention.
https://research.wisc.edu/proj...
Note that you have to disclose the invention to WARF. However, you don't have to give it to them. You have to disclose it because some (but not all) outside grants require inventions be assigned to the university, and WARF wants to make sure you're following the terms of the grant. However, that is not the University's fault. I speak as someone who has disclosed an invention to WARF. They looked it over, determined that it was not covered by a grant that requires I give up the invention, and told me that I could do what I wanted.
WARF and lawyers are the middleman
By that standard, it doesn't matter who owns the patent: any time there is a patent lawsuit there are middleman because lawyers are involved. Of course, that's a silly standard because they don't "make all the money" as you claimed a few posts ago. WARF doesn't really make money since it's a non-profit, and as noted above, despite your disbelief, you can cut WARF out of the loop.
Apple will appeal and they will win
...you won't pay *half* that.
$826.4 million huge compared to my bank account. For Apple is is less then 0.5% of their cash on hand. Not value...actual cash on hand. For a patent on an item as central as the CPU...petty cash it.