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Apple Ordered To Pay $506 Million In Damages For Processor Patent Infringement (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes from a report via Hot Hardware: Apple has been ordered to feed a recognized patent troll hundreds of millions of dollars for infringing on a patent that has to do with technology built into its A-series mobile processors. Initially Apple was on the hook for $234 million, owed to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) after it won a patent dispute against the Cupertino tech giant. However, a judge this week more than doubled the fine by tacking on an additional $272 million. U.S District Judge William Conley in Madison ruled that Apple owed additional damages plus interest because it continued to infringe on the patent all the way up until it expired in 2016. WARF is reportedly a non-practicing entity that exists only currently by defending its patents in litigation. The lawsuit filed in 2014 involves U.S. Patent No. 5,871,752, which describes the use of a predictor circuit that can help processors run more efficiently. WARF claimed the technology was used in Apple's A7, A8, and A8X processors that power the iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and various iterations of the iPad. Apple is not commenting on the matter, though it's being reported that Apple plans to fight and appeal the ruling.
Ordered to pay the University of Wisconsin. By a judge who: Bachelor's degree from University of Wisconsin - Check Juris Doctorate from University of Wisconsin - Check This judge should have recluse himself from the case.
Yes, in the 1990's US universities came to expect to rake in dollars based on the fact that many research projects undertaken at their labs and by their professors could be patented. This happened even at public, state-funded universities and research that was paid for by federal agencies like NIH. To put it briefly, US taxpayers funded the work and a few profs and administrators decided they could cash in because the rules allowed it. It's wildly immoral, though.
I personally studied with Prof. Sohi in the nineties when he and his students initially filed the patent, which they did essentially to get beer money. At Wisconsin the alumni foundation will give the inventors 20% of all royalties and WARF takes the other 80% for the risk involved in filing and prosecuting anyone who is dumb enough to mess with them. The inventors get to split $2000 that is given to them upfront. The first people to try and steal their idea was actually Intel, who actually sent researchers over from their Israeli research lab to sit in on the talks by Sohi and his students after they initially published their ideas in an academic paper. At the time they told Intel they would gladly license it to them for cheap. Intel told them to fuck off, telling them they had no IP since they published an academic paper on the subject. Intel actually based their Centrino line off this patented idea. Today Intel doesn't market the Centrino brand because around 2010 they settled out of court, two days before the trial was to begin, for an undisclosed sum. They did so because WARF and Wisconsin could easily prove that they had stolen the idea. The one caveat Wisconsin requested was that Intel not market the Centrino brand anymore. The same people who robbed Sohi at Intel were hired by Apple and now the same thing essentially happened, fat money being sent to Sohi and his crew but his time out in the open so dipshits who know nothing of the history can talk shit about one of the top academics in chip design in the US. It's not trolling it's a multi billion dollar company who can normally shit on the litttle guys getting their comeuopance.