Apple Could Pay Up To $862 Million After Losing Patent Lawsuit

Apple latest hurdle in the world of
patent disputes could blow a small hole in its
$200 billion cash mountain .
A U.S. federal jury has ruled that Apple used
technology owned by the licensing arm of the
University of Wisconsin on some of the chips
that found their way into recent iPads and
iPhones.
The jury has yet to decide on damages but the
University has been seeking as much as $862
million for patent infringement.
The University filed the patent in 1998, for
technology that could enhance the efficiency of
computer processors.
It sued Intel for infringing on the
same patent in 2008, and settled out of court
with the company before it could go trial. Intel
ended up paying the University a $110 million
lump sum to license the patent, court documents
show.
Apple had argued that the patent was invalid
and thus couldn’t have been infringed, but the
jury deemed Apple wrong on that count. They
agreed with the plaintiffs that Apple’s A7, A8
and A8X processors, which are found in its latest
iPhones and iPads, had violated the patent.
A representative at the Wisconsin Alumni
Research Foundation said the foundation would
not comment on ongoing litigation.
Apple was forbidden from referring to the
University as a “patent troll,” according to court
documents , because such terms could prove
prejudicial and carried negative weight.
Having initially sued Apple in January 2014, the
University’s licensing arm, known as the
Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation,
launched a separate, still-pending lawsuit last in
September claiming it had also infringed on the
patent with its latest iPhone models, the 6S and
the 6S Plus.
The licensing arm claims that it offered to
license the patent to Apple for a fee, but the offer
was ignored.
The way in which Apple allegedly ignored that
issue could come back to haunt the
company further. Once the jury in Madison
Wisconsin decides on damages, they’ll also be
asked to decide whether Apple infringed on the
patent wilfully, and that could lead to bigger
penalties, according to Reuters .
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the plaintiff made an
aggressive push for willfulness enhancements,”
says Florian Mueller, an expert in patent
infringement lawsuits who writes the FOSS
Patents blog . That could theoretically end up
in tripling the damages, a nightmare scenario
for Apple. “But in the past, damages awards of
this proportion have typically been reduced on
appeal.”
Shares of Apple were down 1.5% to $110.10 in
Wednesday morning trading in New York.