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Apple ordered to pay $21.7 million in patent suit

A patent holder that was granted $19 million from Apple by a jury in April has won another $2.7 million in interest costs in the final judgment against the Mac maker.

OPTI Inc. announced Friday that the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas had found that Apple infringed on patent No. 6,405,291. The extra $2.7 million was added as pre-judgment interest, bringing the total cost to Apple $21.7 million.

OPTi's $19 million victory was made official in April, when a jury in the Marshall Division court found that Apple "wilfully" violated three claims in the patent, which describes a system for predictive snooping of cache memory that helps shuttle information between a processor, its memory, and other elements of a computer.

The suit, first filed in early 2007, was based on the broadly worded "291" patent. Legal action was also taken against AMD in a similar case.

OPTi reportedly dropped all of its original manufacturing and sales businesses in 2003 to concentrate on lawsuits.

Patent suits are often filed in the Eastern District of Texas for favorable rulings.

Apple had tried to counter the company's claims by arguing the patent was invalid through both prior art and the obviousness of the techniques involved. Judge Charles Everingham of the Marshall Court rejected those notions in his verdict.

The final outcome of the Apple case itself will play a role in the Company’s strategy for pursuing its patent infringement claims and the Company’s ability to realize licensing revenue from its Predictive Snoop patents will be significantly affected if the final outcome of the litigation is not successful," OPTi said in a press release issued Friday.