Apple Ordered To Pay $506 Million In Damages For Processor Patent Infringement (hothardware.com) 119
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.
All that predictor technology... (Score:4, Insightful)
...and they still didn't see it coming!
Having said that, is this WARF really a patent troll? My (foreigner's) understanding is that in the US, universities often expect some returns on their research in form of patent royalties.
Re: All that predictor technology... (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed, WARF is not a patent troll. They genuinely represent university inventors and feed through licensing revenues to said inventors (in fact, for federally funded patents, this practice is required by law).
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My question is - who funded the particular research which resulted in these patents?
If the answer is a US government entity, I don't think a university and/or faculty member should be able to hold the patents. If anything, the rights should go to some sort of trust which would license the tech out and then use the proceeds to either repay the government or else make additional funds available for research grants.
Re: All that predictor technology... (Score:4, Insightful)
They genuinely represent university inventors
That doesn't make them "not a troll". All trolls represent "inventors" in some way. But very very few of these inventions are "stolen". What generally happens is someone (Apple in this case) comes up with an idea independently, implements it in a real product, and is then sued by the troll for "stealing" the idea. Almost anything you can imagine is already patented. It is very rare for a company designing a new product to search the patent database for ideas to license, and equally rare for inventors to go out and market their inventions to established companies. The "inventors" are adding nothing of value to the process. They are just parasites. That doesn't change just because they work at a university.
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This is false more often than true. Other than startups, most companies do patent searches as part of research for ways to solve difficult problems. When a patent is found that is by far the best way to implement a solution, there is a decision to be made: do we license the patent, wait for it to expire, design around it, or use it and hope nobody notices? Engineers usually want to make a design that does almost the same thing but avoids i
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More likely, they deliberately added technology based on one of the patents that they have a permanent joint license for from IBM/Motorola as part of their AIM Alliance deal in the late 90s, and the technology just happens to be very similar to what these folks independently invented and patented a few years later.
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The "inventors" are adding nothing of value to the process. They are just parasites. That doesn't change just because they work at a university.
What? What do you think a university research foundation will do with that money? WARF isn't taking this cash and paying out some hedge fund with it. That money goes back into funding university research. You know, like the research which created this patent in the first place.
As far as I can tell, this is a sterling example of the system working as it actually should. 1) Grad students and professors do cutting-edge research, taking the risks. 2) Industry uses this research to produce commercial pro
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What risks? Professors are just doing their jobs, keeping busy so that they'll be paid. Creating something patentable is a bonus; there's no risk involved. Grad students are there for an education and a degree, and if they publish they also gain a reputation. Again, creating something patentable is a bonus; there's no risk involved.
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Apple could have licensed the tech for far less, but they decided to just keep using it, even after being informed of the infringement. For a company worth billions and billions of dollars, not a bad thing to get a slap on the wrist and being forced to divest some of their cash and reinvest it back into basic research.
So, you really think a company worth billions of dollars, with a team of people that do nothing but patent research, and who have successfully been sued for things as stupid an obvious as the data organization in an iPod (FFS!!!), and who likely already HAS hundreds of license agreements in place, is just going to roll-the-dice in this day and age of drop-of-the-hat patent litigation?
Doesn't pass the smell-test, sorry.
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It is very rare for a company designing a new product to search the patent database for ideas to license, and equally rare for inventors to go out and market their inventions to established companies.
That's partly because if you did search for it, the other side can claim you found their patents, and thus your infringement was now "willful", which results in triple damages. Since you'll be sued either way, it's safer to go in blind. Tech companies specifically instruct their employees not to search for patents for this reason.
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They genuinely represent university inventors
That doesn't make them "not a troll". All trolls represent "inventors" in some way. But very very few of these inventions are "stolen". What generally happens is someone (Apple in this case) comes up with an idea independently, implements it in a real product, and is then sued by the troll for "stealing" the idea. Almost anything you can imagine is already patented. It is very rare for a company designing a new product to search the patent database for ideas to license, and equally rare for inventors to go out and market their inventions to established companies. The "inventors" are adding nothing of value to the process. They are just parasites. That doesn't change just because they work at a university.
This. Exactly.
Royalties (Score:2, Informative)
If they are interested in making money on patents, then they should either make a product using those patents, or sell them to someone who can use them.
In any case, often times, even coming from universities, the patents applied for are minor tweaks on existing, well established technology. A branch predictor circuit? Those have been around for decades. The really advanced designs were on DEC Alpha chips, whose patents are now held, I believe, by HP. They did global prediction, which sounds an awful lot lik
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There's typically more than one way to accomplish something and Apple was free to use methods for which the patents had expired or to develop their own approach.
C'mon, we all know how this works. Apple probably did figure out a new way of doing it, and it happened to be the same method WARF has a patent for. Because, looking cursorily at WARF's patent, it's a tweak on a global branch prediction circuit.
As for the trial, yeah, try explaining to a judge how a particular tweak to a global branch predictor circuit is obvious. Or how you added further tweaks that make your design work differently enough to not encroach on a particular patent.
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No that's not how it works. apple copies and steals from others all the time. Sometime they get caught. Sometime they dont. This time they did. No need to make up any other "innocent" apple stories.
Prove it, motherfucker, or GTFO.
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Automative companies still receive new patents for what are largely tweaks or just different ways of doing the same thing and that's on technology that's been around for over one hundred years at this point. There's typically more than one way to accomplish something and Apple was free to use methods for which the patents had expired or to develop their own approach. If they think the patent should be invalid, they had ample chance to demonstrate that during the trial.
Right. Because most judges would even know a branch-predictor from a washing-machine.
Re:Royalties (Score:5, Informative)
If they are interested in making money on patents, then they should either make a product using those patents, or sell them to someone who can use them.
It represents a university. Universities don't make products, they conduct research. Some of that research has practical usage, some of it doesn't (that's part of the idea of a university: they can conduct basic research, not just product development). The technology that is potentially useful can be licensed to fund more basic research, which is the idea behind WARF. It's a non-profit that handles the licensing and feeds the money back into funding research. WARF may not make a product, but they certainly don't follow classical patent-troll patterns (not least of which is, you know, being a non-profit, which kinda undermines the entire motivation behind patent trolling).
A branch predictor circuit? Those have been around for decades.
Coincidentally, so has the patent: it was filed 1996. I don't know enough about the technology to say much, but it certainly doesn't sound like a troll patent.
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Apple, IBM, and Motorola did some pretty significant branch prediction work on PowerPC, too, e.g. US5659752 [google.com]. I'm not saying that any of their patents are necessarily prior art, but some of them probably are. IBM, in particular, filed a *lot* of patents.
Re:All that predictor technology... (Score:5, Informative)
As a former researcher at the University of Wisconsin, I can reassure you that WARF is not a patent troll. WARF is a frequent target of accusations of being a patent troll, but they are a legit arm of the university. They get a bit of a bad rep because they're much more aggressive in asserting their patent rights than other public universities. The patents are certainly real, and they're based on real research. WARF won't pursue bullshit patents just because they think they might generate a payout, they only pursue stuff that is legitimately applicable and interesting.
If anything, I'd say they're overly conservative in what they choose to patent. My grad research was patentable, but they opted not to just because THEY didn't understand the application. Wish I'd gone out and paid for it myself, it's the hot new thing in a certain growing tech sector.
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It's the "non practicing entity" part that suggests they are a troll. If you're not practicing, you're not spending much money, and you don't really deserve a patent.
Re: All that predictor technology... (Score:1)
is there even such a thing as "patent troll"?
The more i see that term used the more i read it as "bo ho ho [big corporation] got patent trolled [had to pay an inventor for their invention]"
software slightly different, imho - but only if you dont believe software patents should exist in the first place.
US has lost access to some breathtaking software in recent years because developers dont want to navigate that patent minefield, especially in healthcare research.
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I would not call WARF a patent troll. They are a University Tech Transfer office trying to commercialize the University's R&D. They are prosecuting their own patents.
Re: All that predictor technology... (Score:1)
"with no intent to develop"
the point of a patent is that you do not need the means or capability to take an invention to market to make money on your idea. Otherwise why would anyone make their ideas public. everyone would just keep it secret and try to develop it themselves.
So your description of a patent troll is actually just a description of a company looking after the rights of small inventors who made their inventions public for big corporations to use.
Re: All that predictor technology... (Score:1)
there are limits. a patent lasts for 20 years.
during that time if you "want to make and sell" something similar you have to pay the boatman [the person who came up with the idea and made it public]
arguing for anything different is arguing not to have patents in the first place.
otoh, its great that the us publishes howtos for every new software invention to sell in europe and the rest of the world without having to pay the boatman.
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You should know that almost all hardware is written and simulated in some language like C before it re-designed in a hardware description language (HDL) like Verilog. Yes, your magical hardware innovation (that deserves patenting) was born as some piece of C software initially. Yet, that C can only be patented if you transform/translate it to a language like Verilog.
Which points out to the BS th
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the only reason you need patents is when taking a product to market requires the vast resources of a big corporation. then there is a seperation between the inventor of an idea and the producer of an idea and a market failure whereby inventors have no incentive to make their inventions known and no means to take them to market.
software does not require a big corporation to mass produce, therefore has no reason that i can see to grant monopoly rights to an "inventor" beyond the normal copyright mechanism aut
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Which points out to the BS that software should not be patentable.
The VHDL translation process is not inventive. Therefore it shouldn't change the patentability status since there's no creative input in it. The synthesized hardware is exactly as creative or novel as the original software. Maybe you're making an argument that hardware synthesized from software shouldn't be patentable? Perhaps that is the case.
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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.
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Sleazy business (Score:3)
Way back in the 90s my little company was targeted by a patent troll. We were small potatoes but the co-defendents included Intel, IBM, and Digital. It seems some law firm was convinced that Ethernet infringed on some arbitration mechanism ARCnet used and they got the patent for it (from Datapoint I recall) so it was off to the horizon. They saw dollar signs.
Nothing ever came of it of course but it was still annoying to say the least to get served papers while we ere still trying to get one of our first products established.
I wish we could come up with a way to slap down patent trolls without making it harder for legitimate patent holders to defend their IP. I can't think of any.
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That's ridiculous.
You're saying some genius invents something and patents it, listing their cost as 1 $0.20 pencil and 1 $0.50 notebook, anyone can buy it out for $14?
They didn't pay someone to invent shit for them, so there are no wage or time costs involved.
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I have been developing my brain for over 40 years. I have invested a shit load of capital on that development and untold man hours.
All that came to bare when I created my invention. I'm going to be filthy rich.
Oh and your suggestion is utterly stupid.
Conflict of Interest (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Conflict of Interest (Score:4, Informative)
Nope. Get your facts straight:
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Like that's still not an obvious conflict of interest. Apple does morally owe the UW inventors something for their IP, but this judge failing to recuse is going to cost them at appeal. Apple's legal defense fund has the same mass as the core of Pallas.
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If you disagree, please cite relevant case law.
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Mr. Trump [washingtonpost.com], don't you have better things to do then hang around slashdot?
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But he had a moral requirement as a man to try to stop the rapes.
The patent on stopping rapists is held by the descendants of a guy named Colt.
Not a troll. (Score:5, Informative)
A non-practicing entity _could_ be a patent troll, but not here. Apple has vast resources to defend itself, did so in court, and lost because the court determined that they were infringing a valid patent.
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This is correct, WARF legitimately handles University of Wisconsin's patents.
Now, whether or not a public university paid for by taxes should be ABLE to patent stuff and/or not license it on a "reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing" (RAND) basis, where we use "public funds" to help determine the "reasonable" part...
Re:Not a troll. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Some people think universities are mostly trolls (Score:4, Informative)
WARF is reportedly a non-practicing entity that exists only currently by defending its patents in litigation.
My first question would be does anyone else license this patent from them?
Actually it looks like they do. http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com] (the single page link does not seem to work)
I'm not sure troll applies to this company anymore than it does to Apple itself.
I did like one of the comments on the linked article from 2014 though;
"So apple get sued for patent infringement is patent trolling but apple suing for rectangles with rounded corners or unlocking by sliding your finger (on a touchscreen!) Is fine...."
Intel Centrino Inside (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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UW Computer Arch Ph.D. here (Guri was on my defense panel).
Some things you say are a bit stretched/inaccurate. Intel had in large part funded UW's research programs via grants, etc. They did not have patent rights though, so getting sued over a patent from their partially funded research very much caught them by surprise. Their settlement UW was lessened due in part to Rob Chappell (Yale Patt Michigan Ph.D. student), documenting alternative ways Intel could have implemented dependence prediction without
WARF isn't actually a patent troll (Score:1)
WARF is a part of the University of Wisconsin. The royalties go towards actual research. The research creates knowledge and patents. The patents result in more royalties. It's a positive cycle.
It's a really good idea, as it supports smart people who work on advanced ideas.
Apple treated differently to Megaupload (Score:1)