Apple has been ordered to pay $19 million to Opti Inc., a technology company based up the road in Palo Alto, for patent infringement. The verdict came out of Patent Lawsuit Valley (also known as the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall) late Thursday, where a jury found that Apple had "willfully" infringed on Opti's patent for "Predictive snooping."

The patent—its full name is "Predictive snooping of cache memory for master-initiated accesses"—describes a method to more efficiently transfer data among the CPU, memory, and "other devices." The patent was issued to Opti in June of 2002, and the company filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple in January of 2007 (which we briefly mentioned in a Friday Apple links post that week).

Apple had acknowledged that it used similar technology, but argued unsuccessfully that the patent should be declared invalid due to prior art and obviousness. Much to Apple's dismay, the jury didn't buy it. They ended up rejecting Apple's claims and found the company guilty of willful patent infringement, awarding Opti $19,009,728 as a "reasonable royalty for infringement." We sincerely hope some lawyer uses that extra $8 to buy a nice coffee or something.

With close close to $30 billion in the bank, $19 million isn't likely to hurt Apple very much in the overall picture. However, cases like this remind us of why Apple seems to be a popular target for patent infringement suits. It's a large, well-loved company that has tons of cash. If it's not careful with those patent searches when developing new technology, the company could continue to find itself shelling out—or being forced to change its products.

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