Jury orders Apple to pay university $234 million in patent suit

Mike Snider | USA TODAY

A federal jury decided that Apple infringed on the University of Wisconsin-Madison's technology patents and should pay the school $234 million in damages.

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) filed the case last year claiming that Apple used performance-improving processing technology that the foundation had patented itself in 1998. The jury ruled that the technology is used in Apple's A7, A8 and A8X chips that are found in Apple products including the iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6 and iPhone 5s and several versions of the iPad.

"We believed our technology was ahead of its time," said UW research Professor Gurindar Sohi in a statement released by the university. "Almost two decades ago we tried to anticipate how computers would need to operate today. Our team invested the equivalent of more than 11 years of work to solve this problem."

The foundation registered the patent in 1998 on behalf of Sohi and three graduate students (Andreas Moshovos, Scott Breach, Terani Vijaykumar), the group says.

Apple declined comment on the decision, but the company will appeal the decision, Apple spokesperson Rachel Wolf Tulley said.

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