Apple has been found guilty of infringing on intellectual property owned by the University of Wisconsin, resulting in the company owing more than $234 million in damages.
The patents that Apple infringed on relate to technology used in Apple's A7, A8, and A8X processors, which were used in the iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and a number of iPads.
"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," said Gurindar Sohi, a professor who worked on the patent.
The amount rewarded was less than the $400 million that the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) was originally seeking from Apple. The iPhone maker has said that it is planning on appealing the verdict; however, it did not give any information beyond this.
The University of Wisconsin has been very aggressive in enforcing patents that it owns related to processors. The technology was developed by a number of professors and graduate students at the school. This isn't the first time that the school has sued someone related to these patents, pursuing Intel in 2008 for also infringing on the patent. The case was settled in 2009 for $110 million.
This specific patent covers a technique that allowed for out-of-order computer instruction execution, which used a special data speculation circuit. Apple, according to WARF, was aware of the technology, filing patent applications that even cited the patent as prior art.
Apple, however, denies infringing on the patent, arguing that it is invalid and urging the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to review its validity. The agency rejected the move in April. After it was ruled that Apple had infringed on the patent, Apple said that it should owe 7 cents per device using the technology, which would equate to about $10 million. The University, however, argued that Apple should owe $2.74 per device, equating to around $400 million.
