“The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple,” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple. “The patent infringement lawsuit concerns Apple’s newest A7 processor and the products that it powers.”
“The patent-in-suit is United States Patent No. 5,781,752 (the “‘752 patent”), entitled ‘Table Based Data Speculation Circuit for Parallel Processing Computer’ was granted to inventors Andreas Moshovos, Scott Breach, Terani Vijaykumar, and Gurindar Sohi,” Purcher reports. “Their work at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, particularly the work for which they were awarded the patent-in-suit, has significantly improved the efficiency and performance of contemporary computer processors.”
“The complaint further states that ‘WARF is informed and believes, and on this basis alleges, that the acts of infringement by Defendant have been, and continue to be, willful, intentional, and in conscious disregard of WARF’s rights in the ‘752 patent.’ This particular point in the complaint is basically requesting that the court triple the damages against Apple should they be found guilty of patent infringement,” Purcher reports. “The patent infringement case presented in today’s report was filed in the Wisconsin Western District Court, Madison Office. At present, no Judge has been assigned to the case.”
Much more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
Another day, another shot at Apple’s treasure chest… How come noone ever targets Samsung, HTC or India’s Micromax ?
I would say this looks substantive not to mention that it wasn’t filed in Texas.
It may be, but from my reading, it is a specific circuit that Apple cited in its own patent as prior art, ergo Apple’s circuit is either different or sufficiently new to be patentable over and beyond the ‘752 patent in suit. If Apple is using something different to achieve the same result then no foul. I think we are seeing a fishing expedition. They want discovery to see what’s in the A7.
Riiggghhttt.
Seems like it is pretty difficult not to infringe on somebody these days…
Don’t think they’ll be needing any cheese with that whine.
As the patent is described in the article, how is this different than the predictive, out of order techniques use by most RISC machines since the early 90s and Intel’s CISC chips since the same time period?
Unless there is something truly unique in the patent claims, i don’t see this as an issue.
The most damning thing for Apple is that Apple cited this patent as prior art in some of Apple’s own filings. A jury could easily take this as Apple, itself, claiming the patent is valid and the technology used as a basis for Apple’s further work.
Well, we’re hearing one side of the story.
Apple was designing chips before these guys were out of High School. Are they really that stupid, not to have there asses covered when their A7s were released?
This “invention” is from 1998. . . and looks pretty basic to me. I cannot believe that it’s the basis of anything earth shaking in the acceleration of the A7. I think it’s been around and the concept, or something similar with tweaks here and there—and that’s all it takes to get a different patent in this area, is used for a lot of things in data loading. This looks like a Hail Mary suit to me.
This is total B.S. IMO……….
Discovery first and then settlement.
Year or 2 from now.
The settlement is jobs for all of them in Cupertino.
I think Audi should be suing too! J/k.