Apple faces $400m bill for university patent infringement
Apple is facing a potential $400 million bill after a US court found it infringed a patent owned by the University of Wisconsin—Madison that improves the efficiency of processing chips.
On Tuesday, October 13, the US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin ruled that Apple had infringed US patent number 5,781,752, owned by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), the licensing arm of the Wisconsin university.
Apple had challenged the validity of the patent, which was issued to WARF in 1998 by the US Patent and Trademark Office, but this was rejected by a jury.
The ‘752 patent is titled “Table based data speculation circuit for parallel processing computer”.
WARF sued Apple in January 2014. It said the patented technology was infringed by Apple through its iPhones 5 and 6 and various iPad models, which use the A7, A8 and A8X chips.
According to news publication Reuters, WARF had originally demanded $862 million in damages. But the organisation has since amended to its complaint and is now requesting $398.7 million.
The damages part of the trial began yesterday, October 14.
Apple declined to comment.
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