A federal court jury in Madison has awarded $234 million dollars in damages to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation in its patent infringement lawsuit against Apple Inc. That new trial was put on hold while Apple appeals the finding that its iTunes store infringed the patents related to digital rights management. On Friday afternoon, the jury announced the settlement for WARF, which ended up being substantially less than what the foundation had originally sought.
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WARF had sued Apple in February 2014, accusing the company of using the technology behind the patent without permission in its 2013 and 2014 iPhone and iPad lineups.
Apple had argued that WARF’s patent entitled it to as little as 7 cents per device sold, a far cry from the $2.74 that WARF was claiming. The jury, however, disagreed. Such penalties, the foundation says, encourage companies to license patents, providing revenues on which universities depend on to create startups and commercialize their inventions.
The lawsuit, filed in January of a year ago, was over microchip technology-called a “predictor circuit”-developed by computer science professor Gurindar Sohi and three of his students in 1998, according to WARF”.
The jury was considering whether Apple’s A7, A8 and A8X processors, found in the iPhone 5s, 6 and 6 Plus, as well as several versions of the iPad, violated the patent. The technology improves the speed and efficiency of processors that run popular Apple mobile devices such as iPhones and iPads, extending battery life by as much as two hours. “This decision is great news for the inventors, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and for WARF”. “WARF invests in patenting UW inventions for the benefit of the UW and the public”. It ruled that a subset of processing chips produced in Texas by Samsung under contract for Apple, then exported to Korea, still infringed on WARF’s patent.
Most universities that get into royalty disputes look to settle quickly, but they do win when they go to trial. The jurors found that they did.
“Historical facts won’t support a $400 million claim”, Lee said.
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But within that world, WARF has become an aggressive litigator. But on Thursday night, after hearing testimony from Apple’s witnesses during the trial’s damages phase, Conley reconsidered and dismissed the willfulness claim. In the most egregious cases, willful infringement can triple the damages award.
