Apple ordered to pay $234 million to University of Wisconsin for infringing patent

The federal court in Madison, Wisconsin of the USA on 16 October 2015 ordered Apple Inc to pay more than 234 million US dollars in damages to the University of Wisconsin-Madison's patent licensing arm-WARF.

The damages were in lieu of incorporating its microchip technology into some of the company's iPhones and iPads without permission.

However, the amount was less than the 400 million US dollars as demanded by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) as the jury observed that the Apple had not willfully infringed WARF's patent.

Background

In January 2014, the WARF filed a case against the Apple alleging infringement of its 1998 patent on a "predictor circuit," developed by a team led by Indian-origin computer science professors Gurindar Sohi and Terani Vijaykumar.

As per the WARF, the technology was used by the company for improving the performance of computer processors-Apple's A7, A8 and A8X processors, found in the iPhone 5s, 6 and 6 Plus and recently released iPhone 6s and 6s plus as well as several versions of the iPad.

Incidentally, the WARF sued the leading chip maker Intel Corp (INTC.O) for infringing the same patent in 2008 and got 110 million US dollars as compensation.

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