Apple ordered to pay $234 million to university for infringing patent

A jury has awarded the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation more than $234 million in a patent infringement lawsuit against computer maker Apple Inc.

Earlier this week, the jury in U.S. District Court in Madison, Wis., ruled that the university’s 1998 patent on improving processor efficiency was valid and that Apple had infringed upon it when developing processors for a few of its recent devices. The chips were used in Apple’s iPhone 5s, 6 and 6 Plus and a few iPads. That new trial was put on hold while Apple appeals the finding that its iTunes store infringed the patents related to digital rights management.

Veteran intellectual property lawyer John Scheller, who was not involved in the case, said he believes it is the biggest patent infringement award seen in Madison’s federal courthouse, which handles a lot of patent cases because of the pace at which the court works. Apple will be paying a little more than half of the requested amount with the $234 million award WARF received from the jury.

The patent, U.S. Patent No. 5,781,752, covers a technique for efficient out-of-order execution of computer instructions using a data speculation circuit, WARF said in a press release.

Rachel Wolf Tulley, a spokeswoman for Apple, declined to comment on the jury’s decision.

“This is a case where the hard work of our university researchers and the integrity of patenting and licensing discoveries has prevailed”, said Carl Gulbrandsen, managing director of the foundation, in a statement.

Much of the dispute over damages had to do with whether a certain portion of Apple’s chips that were placed in devices sold overseas, rather than in the United States, also violated the WARF patent. “It is important to faculty and to the UW that patented, innovative technologies developed on campus are protected from unauthorized use”. Instead, he said, WARF wanted jurors to ignore history found in those agreements.

The foundation, known as Warf and the source of the name of the blood-thinner warfarin, has been in business for 90 years to commercialize the school’s research. A second case, filed in September, focuses on the A9 and A9X processors in newer models of the iPhone and iPad.