Apple Loses Patent Lawsuit To University of Wisconsin

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It looks like Apple might be on the hook for over $860 million in damages to the University of Wisconsin. :eek:

Apple Inc could be facing up to $862 million in damages after a U.S. jury on Tuesday found the iPhone maker used technology owned by the University of Wisconsin-Madison's licensing arm without permission in chips found in many of its most popular devices.
 
simpsons_nelson_haha1-1.jpg


That is all.
 
I really wish sometimes that they'd change patent laws. Like you're granted the patent, then you must produce a product using the patent within 1-2 years. If nothing, you lose the patent and it becomes public domain.
 
Now here's the question, does UoW get a brand new state of the art football stadium now? Or does that money actually go to benefit the departments that actually came up with the technology?
 
krotch said:
I really wish sometimes that they'd change patent laws. Like you're granted the patent, then you must produce a product using the patent within 1-2 years. If nothing, you lose the patent and it becomes public domain.
Click to expand...

And I think they might even need to go further than that.

A patent will not be granted unless they can demonstrate a working device that incorporates what they are trying to patent.

Of course this would usually require that they file for the patent prior to making the device that incorporates the very specific process in order to make sure that somebody doesn't steal their idea and then patent it before they have a chance to demonstrate a working device.

AND.. software patents should not exist.

AND.. patents MUST be very specific. No broad or obvious ideas should be able to be patented.

AND.. the people granting patents MUST be very knowledgeable in the field the patent is for.

The patent system is so screwed up that it needs to be completely scrapped and redone from scratch.
 
krotch said:
I really wish sometimes that they'd change patent laws. Like you're granted the patent, then you must produce a product using the patent within 1-2 years. If nothing, you lose the patent and it becomes public domain.
Click to expand...

Eh... I would agree with a company needing to do that, but in the case of most universities their patents are simply what previous students did for a research project, they never had a plan to make something to come out to market. In instances like that I think patent laws should be extended a bit more than 1-2 years.

Besides I somehow doubt the UoW was being a patent troll here, they probably let Apple know they were infringing on a design they own and probably offered licensing, Apple willfully told them to fuck off and decided to use it anyways.
 
Walker cut $250 million from the UW budget this year. He then gave that $250 million to the Bucks so they could build a new stadium. Apparently the Bucks are more important than education.

The school needs the money.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Now here's the question, does UoW get a brand new state of the art football stadium now? Or does that money actually go to benefit the departments that actually came up with the technology?
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Well, Apple will probably appeal or something (get it...apple...appeal...peal?).
 
cyclone3d said:
And I think they might even need to go further than that.

A patent will not be granted unless they can demonstrate a working device that incorporates what they are trying to patent.

Of course this would usually require that they file for the patent prior to making the device that incorporates the very specific process in order to make sure that somebody doesn't steal their idea and then patent it before they have a chance to demonstrate a working device.

AND.. software patents should not exist.

AND.. patents MUST be very specific. No broad or obvious ideas should be able to be patented.

AND.. the people granting patents MUST be very knowledgeable in the field the patent is for.

The patent system is so screwed up that it needs to be completely scrapped and redone from scratch.
Click to expand...
I will dream with you for a bit, but I really think this mess is bound to get worse.
 
tikiman2012 said:
Walker cut $250 million from the UW budget this year. He then gave that $250 million to the Bucks so they could build a new stadium. Apparently the Bucks are more important than education.

The school needs the money.
Click to expand...

Wisconsin resident here, and that is nonsense. I'm pissed about them giving the Bucks and their billionaire owners even 1 cent (and I LIKE the Bucks), and I despise Walker, but the UW system is bloated as hell and extremely inefficient. They have $600M in cash sitting in the bank but still raise tuition the maximum amount they can per year as allowed by law, while the jobs for those students dry up. The UW system has also been clamoring for years about wanting more control and less government intervention (the main reason being so they can raise tuition above the limit). One of the stipulations of getting their funding cut is they get more control, exactly what they wanted in the first place.

That money should have gone to K-12 or our crumbling road systems. Are the Bucks owners or UW administration going to contribute to or improve either of those services? No.
 
Live by the sword, die by the sword?... then again, yeah, it is all this patent mess, it is a game of sorts really, the courts are the arbitrators.
 
More to come with the A9 chips... the complaint is linked in the article at techcrunch

http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/14/ap...tent-lawsuit-loss-to-university-of-wisconsin/

The patent in question, U.S. Patent No. 5,781,752 for a “Table based data speculation circuit for parallel processing computer” is meant to make computer chips more power-efficient by using a branch predictor.

And this lawsuit is hardly the end of Apple’s patent woes. WARF filed another suit last month that says Apple’s newest chips, the A9 and A9X, also violate the patent, according to Reuters.

In 2009, WARF filed a similar lawsuit against Intel for violation of the same patent, which was settled out of court.
 
krotch said:
I really wish sometimes that they'd change patent laws. Like you're granted the patent, then you must produce a product using the patent within 1-2 years. If nothing, you lose the patent and it becomes public domain.
Click to expand...

So you expect educational and research institutions to create actual products to be able to get patents for their hard work?
 
Bullshit, everyone knows Apple invented everything, therefore all patents belong to Apple, even if it's someone elses' patent, Apple still invented it.
 
krotch said:
I really wish sometimes that they'd change patent laws. Like you're granted the patent, then you must produce a product using the patent within 1-2 years. If nothing, you lose the patent and it becomes public domain.
Click to expand...

You're attacking basement inventors more than trolls there. The only way an engineering expert could ever consider going into self-employment would be to become a basement inventor in the field he was educated in and has a ton of experience in. In most cases they don't have the money and/or skill set to make the part or idea themselves. The idea could be a special engine blade curvature in a jet fighter. No way he's going to become a jet engine manufacturer on a whim to utilize that idea himself. They only way he makes money is selling the idea. And against a time limit, a company can just wait him out until he panics and is forced to sell it for a fraction of what its worth.

Same thing for a kitchen appliance.

Not only are you screwing the basement inventor in general in many cases you are helping big companies trap good workers from leaving. Trolls who just grab old ideas that were abandoned or are obvious and use the courts and threat of litigation to extort a company is completely different.

That idea that a basement inventor is a troll got cleverly slipped into the patent troll debate by Big Corporations.
 
I didn't realize that public universities could use patents for profit. Since the research was taxpayer funded, I thought IP became public domain.
 
Wrecked Em said:
I didn't realize that public universities could use patents for profit. Since the research was taxpayer funded, I thought IP became public domain.
Click to expand...

Taxpayers exist simply as a source for wallet rape by the state.
 
Wrecked Em said:
I didn't realize that public universities could use patents for profit. Since the research was taxpayer funded, I thought IP became public domain.
Click to expand...

Nope. That is why almost all research tanks are gone now...the universities took up that mantle. I'm okay with it..in theory it should be used to manage university costs..but that is another issue.

Also...a lot of university research is not "tax payer funded". It is joint venture with a larger company who is footing a large portion of the bill. You think a for profit company is going to give IP they paid for away...LOLOLOLOL.
 
I hate Apple as much as the next guy, :) but this sounds a little RAMBUS like on behalf of WARF.
 
how is this like rambus?? Rambus was evil because they claimed they that they owned all SDRAM and DDR technology. They then sued just about everyone in the memory business after having dropped out of JEDEC and setting everyone up.

They were convicted of fraud.


The two situations are not close at all.
 
Wrecked Em said:
I didn't realize that public universities could use patents for profit. Since the research was taxpayer funded, I thought IP became public domain.
Click to expand...
That's my initial reaction as well. Now if UW had done the research in partnership with a company, they *might* have a leg to stand on, but even still...
 
Gweenz said:
Wisconsin resident here, and that is nonsense. I'm pissed about them giving the Bucks and their billionaire owners even 1 cent (and I LIKE the Bucks), and I despise Walker, but the UW system is bloated as hell and extremely inefficient. They have $600M in cash sitting in the bank but still raise tuition the maximum amount they can per year as allowed by law, while the jobs for those students dry up. The UW system has also been clamoring for years about wanting more control and less government intervention (the main reason being so they can raise tuition above the limit). One of the stipulations of getting their funding cut is they get more control, exactly what they wanted in the first place.

That money should have gone to K-12 or our crumbling road systems. Are the Bucks owners or UW administration going to contribute to or improve either of those services? No.
Click to expand...

$600M out of a $6B annual budget is only a 10% cash reserve, which is considered low when compared to any financially healthy private business. However, UW funding does not work anything like a business budget. About $400M of that $600M (and a majority of the annual budget) was restricted to very specific expenditures by Wisconsin state statute or tied up in already ongoing projects and could not be reallocated. For instance, universities are 100% responsible for road maintenance on University property and it must be paid entirely from parking permits and enforcement. Since roads are only resurfaced every 10 years or so, it means they need to run a reserve most of the years. So last year the re-allocatable cash reserve for the entire UW System was about $200M which is about 3% of the annual budget. Given that the state legislature might decide to slash the budget by up to $250M and give the UW only a few months to adjust, it seems prudent to keep at least that much in cash reserves.

To be clear, none of the flexibilities proposed by Walker were in the final budget. And the UW is not asking for unrestricted rights to raise tuition. They just want to have more financial stability and flexibility with the money they are allocated by the state. For stability, they would like the legislature to set tuition costs and university funding for the next 6 or 8 or 10 years and then stick to it. For flexibility, they want to do away with some of the mandatory funding rules that allow the university to adjust to changes in budget due to enrollment, changes to economic needs of the state, or changes in higher education itself in the 21st century.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Now here's the question, does UoW get a brand new state of the art football stadium now? Or does that money actually go to benefit the departments that actually came up with the technology?
Click to expand...

Camp Randall is almost 100 years old and was only renovated a decade ago. The athletic departments of most large universities like those in the Big Ten, Pac 12, etc. are more or less independent, funding-wise, from the school at large. The money will go to the WARF, which helped fund my PhD training.

Useful chunk of change if Apple ever pays up, but it's still not the most valuable patent in UW-Madison's history, though.
 
Draktharbar said:
$600M out of a $6B annual budget is only a 10% cash reserve, which is considered low when compared to any financially healthy private business. However, UW funding does not work anything like a business budget. About $400M of that $600M (and a majority of the annual budget) was restricted to very specific expenditures by Wisconsin state statute or tied up in already ongoing projects and could not be reallocated. For instance, universities are 100% responsible for road maintenance on University property and it must be paid entirely from parking permits and enforcement. Since roads are only resurfaced every 10 years or so, it means they need to run a reserve most of the years. So last year the re-allocatable cash reserve for the entire UW System was about $200M which is about 3% of the annual budget. Given that the state legislature might decide to slash the budget by up to $250M and give the UW only a few months to adjust, it seems prudent to keep at least that much in cash reserves.

To be clear, none of the flexibilities proposed by Walker were in the final budget. And the UW is not asking for unrestricted rights to raise tuition. They just want to have more financial stability and flexibility with the money they are allocated by the state. For stability, they would like the legislature to set tuition costs and university funding for the next 6 or 8 or 10 years and then stick to it. For flexibility, they want to do away with some of the mandatory funding rules that allow the university to adjust to changes in budget due to enrollment, changes to economic needs of the state, or changes in higher education itself in the 21st century.
Click to expand...

This is all true (and well written) but does not address the fact that the UW system is bloated and has been spending money like they are printing it. Take a walk through UWEC sometime (my local campus). They are building glass-and-steel Taj Mahals while at the same time the career opportunities for the students shrinks every year, especially in this area. Tuition keeps increasing, so the cost of an education has never been higher while the value of that education has never been lower. Public institutions should not be allowed to exist outside the bounds of reality.

Their cash reserves do not include public funding, only tuition and other sources, so how can you justify raising tuition when the cash reserves are increasing at a rate greater than their annual budget increase? It's that disparity that bothers me.
 
jpm100 said:
You're attacking basement inventors more than trolls there. The only way an engineering expert could ever consider going into self-employment would be to become a basement inventor in the field he was educated in and has a ton of experience in. In most cases they don't have the money and/or skill set to make the part or idea themselves. The idea could be a special engine blade curvature in a jet fighter. No way he's going to become a jet engine manufacturer on a whim to utilize that idea himself. They only way he makes money is selling the idea. And against a time limit, a company can just wait him out until he panics and is forced to sell it for a fraction of what its worth.

Same thing for a kitchen appliance.

Not only are you screwing the basement inventor in general in many cases you are helping big companies trap good workers from leaving. Trolls who just grab old ideas that were abandoned or are obvious and use the courts and threat of litigation to extort a company is completely different.

That idea that a basement inventor is a troll got cleverly slipped into the patent troll debate by Big Corporations.
Click to expand...

I agree. You want to fix the system but not that the expense of shooting everyone in the head.
 
People seem to forget that this is by far NOT the first time Apple has (stolen) used a patent that does not belong to them without any compensation/licensing.

The common operating procedure at Apple is use/steal what you want without paying a cent, if the person/entity you stole from is small enough then squash any complaints with dozens of lawyers until the company they stole from is ruined/bankrupt.
If the company/entity is large enough, then follow the same procedure but hire more lawyers and then it is more of a gamble if Apple will win. Overall they come out ahead as they usually end up paying less (even including the lawyer fees) than if they had licensed it straight out. Plus this way, they have years of profit built up from selling the offending item as the lawyers duke it out.

Also, while using/implementing the stolen patent they "change" it just enough so they can re-patent it as something "new" that they now own. This would have been more difficult without the paying customers using the existing item/patent they stole.
 
another wisconsinite here, it would be nice to see this money go to covering all of the funding that walker has cut.

also have been to a recent UW football game, camp randall might be older than shit but it has never looked better.
 
Teenk9 said:
So you expect educational and research institutions to create actual products to be able to get patents for their hard work?
Click to expand...

Yes. Nothing I said, says they have to actually sell said product, but they need to create it.

jpm100 said:
You're attacking basement inventors more than trolls there. The only way an engineering expert could ever consider going into self-employment would be to become a basement inventor in the field he was educated in and has a ton of experience in. In most cases they don't have the money and/or skill set to make the part or idea themselves. The idea could be a special engine blade curvature in a jet fighter. No way he's going to become a jet engine manufacturer on a whim to utilize that idea himself. They only way he makes money is selling the idea. And against a time limit, a company can just wait him out until he panics and is forced to sell it for a fraction of what its worth.

Same thing for a kitchen appliance.

Not only are you screwing the basement inventor in general in many cases you are helping big companies trap good workers from leaving. Trolls who just grab old ideas that were abandoned or are obvious and use the courts and threat of litigation to extort a company is completely different.

That idea that a basement inventor is a troll got cleverly slipped into the patent troll debate by Big Corporations.
Click to expand...

Guess that guy is going to need to work at a company and make sure any invention he creates while working at said company is his patent, not the company's. There's plenty of inventors who have written agreements for such.

Also most of your basement inventors, tend to create a product nowadays. Maybe only one, but they create something. Then they use kickstarter or some kind of entrepreneur investor to mass produce it.

Special engine blade curvature. Ya, sounds like it'd be a vague and stupid patent I would never allow to be patented. Like rounded corners on a rectangular metal object.
 
This decision is going to get appealed by Apple, without a doubt. This is only a district court and not federal circuit court.

Also the way current patent system works, if the claimed invention has no prior art, is not obvious (this is more subjective thing than objective), and is not a non-patentable thing, the USPTO is obliged to give you a patent.

The USPTO used to require a working device in order to be able to grant a patent, but with over half a million patent applications every year and growing, if it is still required, it will already be a nightmare for examiners long before now. Also, there is then an ambiguous term of 'working', especially the thing you are patenting for is not visible to the naked eye.

And lastly, the way the world works, you generally do NOT go and ask people for licenses UNTIL you are asked to do so. It's not exclusive to Apple. Marvell has done this to Carnegie Mellon University as well and the damage is that is actually fairly comparable (their excuse is even worse, they thought the patent was obvious and invalid, but they named the infringing device AFTER the inventor of the patent).
 
Wrecked Em said:
I didn't realize that public universities could use patents for profit. Since the research was taxpayer funded, I thought IP became public domain.
Click to expand...

LOL. No.

Patents are a significant portion of income sometimes, depending on the university.
 
Wrecked Em said:
I didn't realize that public universities could use patents for profit. Since the research was taxpayer funded, I thought IP became public domain.
Click to expand...

Depends on the exact wording of the contract behind the university and the relevant department. But if the resulting IP became public domain, it would have been pointless to apply for patents at all, just publish it as a scientific article and you are done.
 
Gweenz said:
Wisconsin resident here, and that is nonsense. I'm pissed about them giving the Bucks and their billionaire owners even 1 cent (and I LIKE the Bucks), and I despise Walker, but the UW system is bloated as hell and extremely inefficient. They have $600M in cash sitting in the bank but still raise tuition the maximum amount they can per year as allowed by law, while the jobs for those students dry up. The UW system has also been clamoring for years about wanting more control and less government intervention (the main reason being so they can raise tuition above the limit). One of the stipulations of getting their funding cut is they get more control, exactly what they wanted in the first place.

That money should have gone to K-12 or our crumbling road systems. Are the Bucks owners or UW administration going to contribute to or improve either of those services? No.
Click to expand...

You're right.

I don't like taking from any education system. The move to give them more control should not have happened. I don't agree with privatizing or semi-privatizing any education system. With that said though, the UW houses some of the great minds in our country that have garnered worldwide recognition. I'd hate for this state to get any slower than it already has.

But also, yes. Roads! Where I'm at the local government gives the high schools $10 to $15 million a year for their unnecessary sports programs and then afterwards throws a fit and wants to raise taxes because they have a hard time finding $5 million for road upkeep & repair without ever mentioning the money wasted on those sports programs. Completely absurd. Another city close to me doesn't fund their sports programs. That's on the parents & volunteers, the way it should be.
 
potency said:
Of course, because it doesn't cost anything to run a country. :confused:
Click to expand...

The country use to just be run via tariffs on incoming goods. Then the government felt like giving ppl free rides, so they needed funds from somewhere.
 
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